The Resurrection of the Messiah 9780199752096, 0199752095

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Prologue
Part I: The Setting
1. The Hope of Israel
2. Death and the Afterlife in the Greco-Roman World beyond Israel
3. The Christian Claim
Part II: Witnesses
4. Paul
5. Mark
6. Matthew
7. Luke
8. John
Part III: Questioning the Witnesses
9. What Should We Make of the Witnesses’ Claims?
10. So What? A Partially Unscientific Postscript
Additional Notes
A: On Varieties of Faith in Early Christianity
B: On Whether the New Testament Narratives Are Useful Sources of Information about Anything That May Actually Have Happened
C: Are the Passion Narratives Examples of “the Prophetization of History” or of “the Historicization of Prophecy”?
D: The Resurrection of the Dead and Torah
E: The Alexamenos Graffito and Texts of Terror
F: Further Reflections on Paul’s Understanding of Resurrection as Involving a Transformed Physicality
G: Further Reflections on Paul’s Understanding of Our Present Experience of Transformation In and Through Christ
H: The New Testament and the Negative Eschaton: The Possibility of Damnation
Notes
Selected Bibliography and Sources
Abbreviations
Index
Selected Authors and Sources (other than Holy Scripture) before 1000
A
B
C
D
E
G
H
I
J
L
M
O
P
Q
S
T
V
Selected Authors and Sources between 1000 and 1850
Selected Authors and Sources since 1850
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
V
W
Y
Z

Citation preview

The Resurrection of the Messiah

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The Resurrection of the Messiah christopher bryan

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Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright © 2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bryan, Christopher, 1935– The resurrection of the Messiah / Christopher Bryan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-975209-6 (hardback: alk. paper) 1. Jesus Christ—Resurrection. I. Title. BT482.B78 2011 232.9'7—dc22 2010015959

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

In memoriam Tigger 1991–2008 canis amatae et fidelis

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Contents

Prologue, 3 Part I The Setting 1. The Hope of Israel, 9 2. Death and the Afterlife in the Greco-Roman World beyond Israel, 19 3. The Christian Claim, 35 Part II Witnesses 4. Paul, 45 5. Mark, 65 6. Matthew, 83 7. Luke, 101 8. John, 123 Part III Questioning the Witnesses 9. What Should We Make of the Witnesses’ Claims? 159 10. So What? A Partially Unscientific Postscript, 173

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contents Additional Notes

A: On Varieties of Faith in Early Christianity, 191 B: On Whether the New Testament Narratives Are Useful Sources of Information about Anything That May Actually Have Happened, 193 C: Are the Passion Narratives Examples of “the Prophetization of History” or of “the Historicization of Prophecy”? 205 D: The Resurrection of the Dead and Torah, 207 E: The Alexamenos Graffito and Texts of Terror, 213 F: Further Reflections on Paul’s Understanding of Resurrection as Involving a Transformed Physicality, 217 G: Further Reflections on Paul’s Understanding of Our Present Experience of Transformation In and Through Christ, 221 H: The New Testament and the Negative Eschaton: The Possibility of Damnation, 231 Notes, 235 Selected Bibliography and Sources, 383 Abbreviations, 417 Index, 423

Acknowledgments

“I would like to begin this study with the unusual confession that I shall be discussing a subject which, in the last analysis, I do not understand.” With this splendid disclaimer Ernst Käsemann began his monograph The Testament of Jesus. Perhaps it would be well if such a confession were more common. In any case, I am happy to make it mine as regards the present work. The problem is not, moreover, simply one of understanding. I have been told that Raymond Brown, arguably the greatest biblical scholar of the twentieth century, would not write a book about our Lord’s resurrection because he did not consider himself worthy to do so. Perhaps that was why even Saint Mark would only record its announcement by an angel. And perhaps it would have been well if that same consideration had silenced me. But it didn’t, as my readers can see. Not, of course, that I consider myself worthy, but we all do what we need to do, and I needed to try this. Indeed, one might argue that I need Christ to be the Risen One, coming to me and calling me by name. I grant that. And so I have written this book. Of course these two factors – my lack of understanding and my desire – neither relieve me of the duty to maintain academic rigor nor excuse my blunders in that direction. Quite the contrary! But perhaps – fides quaerens intellectum – they do explain why I have written at all. Moreover I find, as did Anselm, that such understanding as I gain through this process is for me also and invariably a source of delight: which is, I suppose, another reason for writing.

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acknowledgments

As always in such an enterprise, there are innumerable people to whom one is indebted. Indeed, so many people have helped me in so many ways with information, advice, encouragement, proofing, research, and resources that to spell out those ways would make of this acknowledgment a book in itself. But here are those of whose gifts to me I am most aware and to whom I am deeply grateful. I name them simply in alphabetical order. They include the Reverend Dr. Ellen Bradshaw Aitken; Fr. Peter Allen, C.R.; Major Robert Begbie, Royal Artillery; Ms. Joan Blocher; the Reverend Dr. William Brosend; the Reverend Vicki Burgess; Mr. Haynes Burnett; the Very Reverend Richard Burridge; Dr. Robert G. Delcamp; Dr. James Dunkly; Dr. John Gatta; the Reverend Dr. Julia Gatta; Dr. Paul Holloway; Ms. Shawn Horton; the Reverend Dr. Robert D. Hughes III; the Reverend Dr. Robert W. Jenson; Mr. James David Jones; Dr. David Landon; Ms. Luann Landon; Dr. Katherine L. Lehman; Dr. Jonathan May; Dr. Christopher M. McDonough; the Reverend Dr. Susanna Metz; the Reverend Calhoun Walpole Perkins; Ms. Cynthia Read; Mrs. Barbara Stafford; the Very Reverend Dr. William S. Stafford; the Reverend Kimberly Still; Ms. Mariana Templin; Ms. Jenny Wolkowicki, the Right Reverend N. Thomas Wright; and the Reverend Dr. Rebecca Abts Wright. Last but hardly least I must acknowledge Wendy Bryan, who graciously continues to put up with me, frequently restraining my wilder fantasies with her good sense. And as always, of course, I must point out that however indebted I am to these good people for all that they have given me, I alone am responsible for whatever is wrong with the result. There are also institutions to which I have reason to be grateful: in particular to the University of the South, which invited me to give the DuBose Lectures for 2006, which were an important stage in my preparing for this book, and in 2010 supported me with a grant to cover the cost of the illustrations many of which, notably reproductions of paintings by the great masters, are themselves exegesis of the texts, and not less valuable or challenging because they are not the exegesis of the biblical scholar; to the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown, South Africa, which in the summer of 2007 allowed me to try out some of my thoughts there; and to the Dioceses of Alabama and Western North Carolina, which did the same in 2008. I must also, and finally, acknowledge and express my thanks to the Sewanee Theological Review, which in March 2007 originally published my DuBose Lectures as The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, some parts of which, for better or worse, have certainly survived into the present volume; and to the editors of Tuesday Morning and Carolina Grace which, in 2009 and 2010 respectively, published earlier versions of my discussion of John’s account of Our Lord’s appearance to Mary Magdalen. Christopher Bryan St. Francis of Assisi, 2009

The Resurrection of the Messiah

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Prologue

Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. That, as a matter of history, is just about as certain as anything in antiquity. Indeed, one might argue that as historical events go it was not even particularly remarkable. Many others had been executed in the same way, by Romans and on occasion—when they had opportunity to run their own affairs—by Jews.1 Crucifixion was cruel, humiliating, and shameful,2 but it was not unusual. What followed was, however, rather less usual. For so long as I can, I wish to stay with what we may reasonably regard as historical certainties and, at this point, with three in particular. The first is this: that in the years following the crucifixion, there came into existence a group of people who claimed to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified teacher from Galilee, and who were in time called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). In other words, there came into existence the Christian church. The second is this: that those first Christians when asked why they had come into existence seem frequently to have given an answer that was something to do with Jesus having risen from the dead.3 Arthur Michael Ramsey, later to be the one-hundredth archbishop of Canterbury, wrote of his initial surprise when he attended lectures by Sir Edmund Hoskyns on the theology and ethics of the New Testament and the lecturer began by saying, “We must begin with the passages about the resurrection.” In time, however,

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Ramsey came to realize that Hoskyns was right. It is “both historically and theologically necessary to ‘begin with the Resurrection.’ For from it, in direct order of historical fact, there came Christian preaching, Christian worship, Christian belief . . . The God of the Christians is essentially the God who raised Jesus from the dead.”4 Exactly so! The centrality of the resurrection in much early Christian self-definition is then my second historical certainty. My third historical certainty is this: that the apostles’ contemporaries—Jew and Gentile alike—will have been just as aware as we are that the dead generally stay dead. Therefore the apostolic claim will have sounded initially just as surprising and unlikely to most of them as it does to us. Nonetheless, the Christians seem stubbornly to have persisted in it: in their proclamation, in the formularies and narratives that marked their cult and their liturgies,5 in debate with others, and in reflection on their own identity. What is more, they did not merely insist on it as a fine old story, their “myth” or “founding legend,” as a good Roman matron might tell her children the ancient stories of Romulus and Remus, pius Aeneas, or Alcestis. Rather, they insisted on telling each other, and anyone else who would listen, this very new story, even on occasion appealing in its regard to named “eyewitnesses” (autoptai) or to what a particular follower of the Lord “remembered” (emnēmneusen), as if they actually expected to be taken seriously. Opinions differ as to what significance should be attached to these appeals, as indeed opinions differ as to what significance should be attached to any of the claims made by texts in the New Testament that purport to tell us about Jesus of Nazareth.6 The fact, however, remains: whatever significance we choose to attach to these appeals, that the early Christians made them can hardly be denied. These then are our certainties or near certainties. But they are certainties that at once raise problems and questions. Why did the Christians make this claim, and what did they mean by it? Why did they stubbornly persist in it despite the disbelief that it must inevitably have engendered? What did happen to the one they called Lord in the days and weeks that followed his crucifixion? In the following pages I intend to give some indication of my response to those questions. The Christian claims were, naturally, formulated and then heard, or even misheard, by and among people who already had their own preconceptions about death and what might follow it. I begin this account, therefore, by considering what those preconceptions may have been. This will occupy my two opening chapters in part I (“The Setting”). Then in my third chapter in part I, I ask what it was that the Christians themselves claimed, and how they are likely to have been understood.

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Part II (“Witnesses”) consists of five chapters in which I examine the chief witnesses to this claim in the New Testament, namely, 1 Corinthians 15 and the resurrection accounts in the Gospels and Acts. Part III (“Questioning the Witnesses”) begins with a chapter asking “What Should We Make of the Witnesses’ Claims?” In this part of my narrative, I try to look at various attempts that have been made to explain what happened at the first Easter in ways that differ from the Christian explanation. I consider with special care those forms of explanation that are currently most fashionable. Then in my final chapter I ask, “So what?” and attempt to explore what early Christians saw as—and, indeed, what truly might be—the consequences of their claim. What did it mean that they believed Christ had been raised from the dead? What difference would that make to anyone else, even if it were true? I call this closing part of my discourse “partially unscientific” because I am at a point in the discussion where, although historical- and literary-critical disciplines still have a contribution to make, I must also pass beyond the boundaries of those disciplines and raise questions that are essentially theological—not, of course, that I consider such questions to be therefore less significant or think that they have less to do with truth. It is simply that they are no longer merely scientific. I should perhaps say one other word to those who choose to accompany me on this tricky journey. Long endnotes and additional notes do not make for a pretty book, but like Jacques with his melancholy, I do love them. I love to chase intellectual hares along winding ways and to argue with other scholars about remote possibilities. Endnotes and additional notes are the places where I feel free to do that. Still, I hope that my main text does in itself provide a coherent and continuous account of the chief things that I want to say and that those who do not share my love of digression and diversion will be able to follow that alone. As for those who do share my delight in curious sidepaths, I offer them a joyful welcome to that part of my world. But already I anticipate. Let us, then, begin at the beginning.

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part i

The Setting

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1 The Hope of Israel

What did the ancients think about death and about what might, or might not, follow it? That is my first question. And since it was with Jews and the world of Second Temple Judaism that the Christian proclamation began, I too shall begin there. What, in these matters, was the hope of Israel? Hermann Samuel Reimarus, the eighteenth century rationalist, suggested that at the time of Jesus’ death, stories of the dead being raised in the Scriptures and the teachings of the Pharisees made it quite natural for Jews to accept the apostles’ claim that Jesus had risen.1 Reimarus was in many ways a shrewd critic, and there was, as we shall see, an element of truth in what he said. Nevertheless, he either overlooked or else chose to ignore a great deal. To begin with, even in the Scriptures, stories of the dead being raised are invariably presented as exceptional. That, after all, is why they are interesting. And even Pharisaic hope was, of course, a hope for what God might do in the future. As far as normal and present experience was concerned, neither the Scriptures nor Pharisaic teaching will have altered the fact that Jews just as much as Gentiles—just as much as Reimarus himself—invariably experienced the dead as staying dead, and death as the country “from whose bourn no traveler returns.” But, in any case, Reimarus vastly oversimplified. There were varieties of Judaism in Jesus’ time, and therefore, even among Jews, there were varieties of views about death, and about what might follow it. Thus, pace Reimarus, there appears to have been at least one group of

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Jews who denied that there could be anything significant after death. According to the synoptic evangelists, the Sadducees asserted that “there is no resurrection” (Mark 12:18–27; par. Matt 22:23–33, Luke 20:27–40; also Acts 23:8), and according to Josephus (who, for the sake of his Gentile readers, probably manipulates his language somewhat to make the Sadducees sound like Epicureans), they held that “the soul perishes together with the body” (Ant. 18.16). It is quite likely that theirs was in fact a theologically conservative position that had been characteristic of Israel throughout much of her history: God’s justice is sure, and his promises are certain, but they are concerned with societies and history rather than particular individuals.2 It is often the case that we can only learn the beliefs of those who in antiquity were characterized by some as heretics, as were the Sadducees, by reading between the lines of what their enemies said about them, which probably does not at all represent how they saw or understood themselves. In the case of the Sadducees, however, we may be more fortunate. An example of the kind of thing that they taught is possibly preserved for us in Sirach,3 composed by “Jesus, son of Sirach, son of Eleazar, of Jerusalem” (Sir 50:27) (customarily referred to as “Ben Sira”) in about 180 BC. Sirach was written, at least in part, perhaps, in deliberate opposition to newly expressed beliefs that following death there would be individual destiny and individual retribution.4 The objection often made to a theology that denies survival and retribution after death is that the wicked and the righteous alike come to the same end. For Ben Sira, however, this is no objection at all: For it is easy for the Lord on the day of death to reward individuals according to their conduct. An hour’s misery makes one forget past delights, and at the close of one’s life one’s deeds are revealed. Call no one happy before his death; by how he ends, a person becomes known. (Sir 11:26–28) Even in the case of individuals, Ben Sira says, God’s judgment and retribution are sure, but they are not after the individual’s death. Or if judgment and retribution do come after death, then they come through one’s descendants. That is the belief reflected by the Greek text of Sirach which, for the closing verse of the section that I have just quoted, offers the following interesting variant:

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Call no one happy before his death, and in his children shall a man be known. (Sir 11:28) This version of Sirach reflects a belief that God’s justice works its way out through the generations—a belief that is, again, evidently very old indeed (see Exod 20:5). As for mourning our beloved dead, Ben Sira is clear that mourning has its place but also that it must be kept in its place. My child, let your tears fall for the dead, and as one in great pain begin the lament. Lay out the body with due ceremony, and do not neglect the burial. Let your weeping be bitter and your wailing fervent; make your mourning worthy of the departed, for one day, or two, to avoid criticism; then be comforted for your grief. For grief may result in death, and a sorrowful heart saps one’s strength. When a person is taken away, sorrow is over; but the life of the poor weighs down the heart. Do not give your heart to grief; drive it away, and remember your own end. Do not forget, there is no coming back; you do the dead no good, and you injure yourself. Remember his fate, for yours is like it; yesterday it was his, and today it is yours. When the dead is at rest, let his remembrance rest too, and be comforted for him when his spirit has departed. (Sir 38:16–23) Again, the belief reflected here is very old. Indeed, the attitude to death is much the same as that accorded to David by the Deuteronomic historian. David fasted and grieved seven days for his sick child, but when the child died, he arose, washed and anointed himself, worshipped God, and ate. When his servants questioned him, he said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘Who knows? The LORD may be gracious to me, and the child may live.’ But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Sam 12:22–23).

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I see no reason why we should assume that those who held such views as Ben Sira’s were devoid of genuine faith, and I would question the opinion sometimes expressed that denial of the afterlife came easily to the relatively wealthy Sadducees because they already had everything they wanted in this life—in other words, as one critic puts it, they “needed no paradise after death because they found paradise in their backyards.”5 We might well, in fact, see some degree of nobility in the view that God is worth obeying in this life for God’s own sake and not for any reason beyond that, save the blessing that one might thereby bring to later generations. So much we may say for the beliefs of the Sadducees. There appears, however, in many Jewish texts written in the later stages of Israel’s history a belief quite contrary to all this—a belief, indeed, not merely that death was not the end of meaningful existence but that the dead would finally be raised. In other words, there would be a reversal or undoing of death. The texts express this belief in two connections that are perhaps best seen as consequential, the latter upon the former. In the former group, to whose beliefs Sirach would surely not have objected (see Sir 50:23–24), “being raised from the dead” is a way of describing the time when God’s gracious and redemptive sovereignty—that is, God’s kingship, the promised vindication and renewal of all Israel—will finally and fully be manifest. Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones is the classic example of this. Therefore prophesy, and say to them, “Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, says the LORD.” (Ezek 37:12–14) As Allen Dwight Callahan says, “Ezekiel’s message of life after exile is nothing less than the declaration of life after death, the pronouncement of a collective resurrection.”6 But such expectation of renewed life and rule in “the land” is not unique to Ezekiel. On the contrary, it appears regularly as an element in God’s promise to Israel. Thus the Isaiah Targum paraphrases Isaiah 31: The kingdom of the Lord of Hosts will be revealed to settle upon the Mount of Zion and upon its hill. Like the bird soars, so the might of the Lord of hosts will be revealed over Jerusalem; he will protect and deliver, rescue and remove. (31:4b–5)7

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Indeed, so prominent is this aspect of Israel’s hope, that in Jacob Neusner’s view, Judaism as a whole “took shape as the system that accounted for the death and resurrection of Israel, the Jewish people, and pointed for the source of renewed life toward sanctification now and salvation at the end of time . . . Both rite and myth aimed at the continuing self-definition of Israel by separation from the rest of the world and exclusion of the rest of the world. Order against chaos meant holiness over uncleanness and life over death.”8 That is the primary context in which the notion of the dead being raised occurs in Israel. But then other texts, beginning at about the time of the Maccabees, offer an evolved use—and, I suspect, precisely the use to which Sirach objected (see Sir 38:21, cited above). In this latter group of texts, “the dead being raised” has become a way of describing what will happen to individuals in the Age to Come, both to God’s faithful and to those who have persecuted them, when each will face God’s postmortem judgment. Daniel provides us with the classic example of this and, among canonical texts, the earliest:9 But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the dome of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. (Dan 12:1c–3)10 Such a hope is evidently a consolation to those who grieve over the death of martyrs, of those who suffer for God’s cause.11 So the author of 2 Maccabees promises that “the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws” (2 Macc 7:23). Similarly the author of Wisdom, probably writing in the closing decades of the last century before Christ,12 sees God’s righteous and faithful child condemned to a shameful death because his faithfulness offends the wicked (Wis 2:12–20) but also sees him finally vindicated by God: at the time of God’s “visitation,” he and those like him shall “judge nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord shall be their King for ever” (Wis 3:8).13 What does this mean? Evidently it does not mean that death is not really important, or that it is really our friend, or that it does not really happen to what is best in us. Beliefs of that kind evolved among others; some Jews were evidently familiar with them, and we shall turn to them at a later point in this discussion. But that is not what these texts are saying. Indeed, they are saying something that is really quite contrary to that. In these texts death, and the loss, pain, and injustice that death may involve, are evidently taken with utter

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seriousness. Indeed, the texts dwell upon that aspect of things (2 Macc 7, Wis 2:10–20). What they also say, however, is that nevertheless, through the redemptive graciousness of God, death (not only the death of communities, but also the death of individuals) will be undone, miraculously overcome through the exercise of a power that is God’s alone. For the present, the dead may be described in various ways—as “asleep” (Dan 12:2), as “souls” held “in the hand of God” (Wis 3:1), as “the spirits of the souls of the dead” waiting “until the date of their judgment” (1 En. 22:3–4).14 But that is not the last stage. The last stage, in the Age to Come, will be a final reembodiment that will be in some sense continuous with previous bodily life. This is the hope that the rabbis would later enshrine, and have continued to enshrine until this day, in the prayers of Israel: Lord who art mighty for all eternity, Thou revivest the dead. Thou art great in saving the living, sustaining them in love. Thou upholdest the falling, Thou healest the sick, Thou freest the bound. In Thy great love, Thou revivest the dead, keeping faith with those who sleep in the dust. Who is like Thee, Lord of Power! Who can be compared with Thee, King who sends death, and in the flowering of Thy saving power gives life! Thou wilt keep faith in reviving the dead. Blessed art Thou, Lord who revives the Dead. (Shemoneh Esreh)15 Here, however, we must make a further distinction. What I have so far said of Israel’s hope could perhaps be understood as implying a hope for the mere bringing back to life of those who had died—in a word, for “resuscitation” of the dead. There are, indeed, examples of resuscitation in the Jewish Scriptures, as in the stories of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath (1 Kgs 17:10–24) and Elisha and the Shunammite woman (2 Kgs 4:8–37). Such restorations to life are naturally seen as things extraordinary and wonderful, and certainly they are signs of God’s power over death (compare Heb 11:35a). But they are, nonetheless, restorations to a life that is still subject to all the limitations and weaknesses of life as we know it—a life that will, moreover, again end in death (compare Heb 11:35b, 39). That, however, is evidently not what the authors of Daniel 12:1–3, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom 2–3, or the Shemoneh Esreh are talking about when they speak of what will finally happen to the faithful dead. Hence the careful reader will have noted that I said earlier that the resurrection life for which Israel looks will be “in some sense” continuous with previous bodily life. It will be. But it will also in some sense be changed, and it will be that precisely because it will no longer be subject to the limitations of life as we know it. It will be as much changed as those who have been martyred for their faith will be changed when

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they finally, in Daniel’s vision, “shine like the dome of the sky” (Dan 12:3) or, in Wisdom’s, “run like sparks amid the stubble, rule over nations, and have the Lord as their king for ever” (Wis 3:7–8). What is going on here? The writers are evidently talking of a new mode of being. The risen dead will not merely be people who were dead but have now been brought back to life. In other words, they will not simply have been resuscitated. Nor, on the other hand, will they be “immortal souls” or “spirits”— perhaps they will have been that for a while after their deaths (Wis 3:1), but at the resurrection they will be something else. What we have here in this developed Jewish hope for resurrection is a third option. I have been emphasizing this because I think it means that we must be very careful when we talk about the Jews (or anyone else) “literally” believing in “physical” or “bodily” resurrection of the dead. The truth of such assertions depends not only on what we mean by “literally” but also on how we limit, or perhaps do not limit, the possibilities of what might be “physical” or involve a “body.” Too many scholars and theologians have talked as if either “resuscitation of corpses” or else Platonic “immortality of the soul” were the only possibilities. Clearly, our texts are not talking about either of these but, as I have said, a third option. The risen dead will indeed be “body”—but “body filled with the Spirit of God.” Their hope is not merely for restored physical life, but for a transfigured physical life. As Jon D. Levenson says in an important study of resurrection faith, late Jewish and rabbinic hopes imply embodiedness . . . though in a transfigured mode that is hard to visualize and can be conveyed only symbolically; the convenient modern dichotomy of physical versus spiritual cannot capture it . . . the beneficiaries of the new way of being are not disembodied spirits, but neither are they ordinary human beings who, amazingly, were once dead but have now recovered their lives . . . postmortal existence is a radical transformation, not the indefinite prolongation, of earthly life.16 Exactly! Much of the language in which our authors try to speak of this hard-toconceive-of hope is, of course, metaphorical. What other kinds of language could they have used? But we should be careful to note that that does not mean that the idea itself was a metaphor. On the contrary! In telling how God gives back “life and breath” to the departed or “revives the dead with great mercy,” the authors of our texts clearly did not think that such language was simply a way of speaking of something else—of the immortality of the soul, perhaps, or of the dead living on in the memories and hearts of those who

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loved or admired them. They believed that they were speaking of something that, however difficult or even impossible for them to imagine, was nonetheless in itself entirely real. Having noted that Jewish resurrection hope from the beginning looked not merely for the continuance of existence but for its radical transformation and transfiguration, we should further note that when our texts speak of this transformation, they soon begin also to use language that speaks of what we might more naturally call “ascension” or “exaltation.” In other words, the resurrection life, like our present life, has an end, a goal, and that goal is union with God. Therefore talk of resurrection life moves naturally from elements that can to some extent be described in terms of life as we know it to something that can only be described in the language of metaphor, music, or mysticism. This is evident from the very first descriptions of the resurrection life that we have: “Those who are wise shall shine like the dome of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever” (Dan 12:3). Alan F. Segal proposes linking the rise of Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead to the rise of Jewish mysticism.17 Mysticism is concerned with ascent to God, and that—not the infinite prolongation of our present existence—is finally what the resurrection life is about, as Judaism understands it. Resurrection leads to ascension, and together they signify the exaltation of God’s creature into that union with God’s own being for which we were created. Such, then, is the faith and hope represented for us by 2 Maccabees (especially 7:9, 11, 14, 21–23, 28–29, 12:40–46, 14:46), by 1 Enoch (102–104, 108, especially 108:11–15), by Wisdom, by Pseudo-Phocylides (102–104)18, possibly by Judith (16:16–17)19, by 2 (Syriac Apocalypse of) Baruch (32:2–5, 49:1–52)20, by Josephus (War 2.163, 3.374), by Qumran (notably the Pseudo-Ezekiel fragments21), and, of course, by the later rabbis, who are clear that “all Israel has a portion in the world to come” (m. Sanh. 10:1; cf. m. ’Abot 4:22).22 This faith and hope are, moreover, essentially parts of what scholars have come to call “Jewish eschatology”—that is, “Jewish understanding of the last things (ta eschata).” These “last things” are not, however, a matter of “the end of the world” as has been and sometimes is still implied. Rather, they are to do with the renewal of the world, when what is wrong with the created order will be put right. I think that if one believes that God is just and faithful, as the Jews do, and yet sees that much in the world is evil, then one is virtually bound to arrive sooner or later at an eschatology somewhat like theirs—a view that God will finally, in Dame Julian’s phrase, “make all things well.”23 John Dominic Crossan, with his usual wit, refers to this as our hope for “the Great Divine Clean Up”—“with a capital G, a capital D, a capital C, and a capital U.”24 The point is, resurrection so understood is not merely to do with “the afterlife” or “personal immortality,”

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though certainly those things are a part of it. Resurrection is to do with a new creation—let it be said frankly, a “barely imaginable”25 creation—that fulfills the prophetic hope for peace and justice. And the basis for that prophetic hope is, as I have said, Israel’s conviction that God is indeed just and will therefore be faithful: faithful to Israel and faithful to the creation. Therefore death, though grim and terrible, does not have the final word over any part of that creation, including its material aspects. The final word is God’s word. Death will be defeated. We have not, however, exhausted all Jewish ways of looking for life after death. In the setting of the rabbinic teaching that we have so far been considering, the immortality of the soul means “the state of those who have died and await their restoration into embodiment, that is, into full human existence.”26 There appear to have been some Jews, however, who taught only the immortality of the soul, without subsequent restoration into embodiment. Their views were akin to, although by no means identical with, the teaching of pagan philosophers like Plato (of which I shall say more in the next chapter)—or, at least, their views as expressed in their writings are susceptible of being understood in that way.27 Such, most notably, is Philo of Alexandria. His thoughts are, to be sure, complex and difficult to understand, but they do indeed appear to center on the migration of the rational soul toward a final unbodied immortality rather than resurrection of whole person. “Whence came the soul?” he asks at one point: Whither will it go, how long will it be our mate and comrade? Can we tell its essential nature? When did we get it? Before birth? But then, there was no “ourselves.” What of it after death? But then we who are here joined to the body, creatures of composition and quality, shall be no more, but shall go forward to our rebirth, to be with the un-bodied, without composition and without quality. (De Cherubim 32.114, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker) A similar view seems to be held by the author (probably Philo’s contemporary28) of 4 Maccabees.29 Certainly Philip R. Davies is right to point out that 4 Maccabees’ assertion of the Platonic view is “very muted,”30 but there can be no doubt as to its influence, not so much in the author’s explicit assertions of it as in his striking omissions in its service. Thus, a major source for his work was 2 Maccabees, which fortunately we possess. So we are able to see for ourselves what he does with it. What we see is that he consistently passes over passages in his source that clearly express belief in the resurrection of the body (such as 2 Macc 7:9, 14, and 23: with which compare 4 Macc 9:30–32, 10:16–21, 16:17–23).

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Whether this shift represents genuine change of conviction in these writers or whether it represents merely an attempt to restate belief in resurrection in terms that would be acceptable to Hellenistic readers—much as Josephus seems to have restated Sadducean and Essene views—remains uncertain. My own suspicion is that with Philo the change in conviction is real;31 with 4 Maccabees I am less sure. In either case, I would observe the shift in terminology did involve a change in meaning, whether the change was intended or not. Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead is, as we have observed, one element in prophetic hope for renewal of the world. God’s promises are not fulfilled until the whole created order, including the body, is given justice. The more platonically stated view is surely open to a much narrower interpretation. Since the rational soul alone is asserted to be godlike and immortal, it has and should have no lasting relationship with the material creation. The material creation, for its part, has no right to or expectation of justice and, therefore, no serious role to play in eternity.

2 Death and the Afterlife in the Greco-Roman World beyond Israel

There were those in the Greco-Roman world at large for whom any teaching about life after death was nonsense. The followers of Epicurus regarded it as their mission to “deliver men’s minds from the tyranny of religious fears, and in particular from the fear of the intervention of divine powers in the events and affairs of this world, and the fear of death and the punishment of the soul hereafter for its misdeeds in life.” In their view, “We must not listen to the terrors and threats of religion, but boldly proclaim the mortality of the soul.”1 Among the most famous and effective of those who taught in this way was the Latin poet Lucretius, who, in the first half of the last century before Christ, wrote a poetic treatise On the Nature of Things, in which again and again he paused “suddenly and unexpectedly” in his scientific argument “to warn his readers of the falseness of the theological view of the world.”2 In particular, he insisted, Death is nothing to us, nor does it concern us in the least. (On the Nature of Things 3.830)3 Why, indeed, asked Lucretius, should one even want immortality? Was not one life, with its joys and sorrows, quite enough for a reasonable person? Why not, as a banqueter fed full of life, withdraw With contentment, and rest, you fool, in peace? (On the Nature of Things 3.938–9)4

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The poet Virgil was in his turn impressed by Epicurean teaching, particularly as it was passed on by Lucretius. As we shall see, the characters and plot of Virgil’s Aeneid explicitly endorse and dramatize traditional Greco-Roman myths of the afterlife (as, incidentally, they also at points explicitly endorse the view of Roman imperium desired by Rome’s official apologists5), but that does not mean that the poet himself shared those certainties. On the contrary, it is clear that Virgil particularly questioned the justice of the vision of divine and human destiny that his narrative constrained him to present. In this he contrasts sharply with Homer, in so many other ways his model. Thus, near the climax of the Aeneid, when Virgil’s hero Aeneas must defeat Turnus, the poet shows himself to be affected not only by the conflict between his characters but also by the bitter civil conflict that had torn apart Italy itself only a couple of decades before his own birth (91–87 B.C.). In the light of the latter, in his own person, Virgil cries out in a way that would be inconceivable in Homer: What God could now unfold for me So many bitter deaths, which poet could tell Of all the captains who met their many dooms Driven over the plain now by Turnus, Now by the Trojan hero? Did it please you, Jupiter, that nations destined to live In everlasting peace should clash so harshly? (Aeneid 12.500–504, trans. Stanley Lombardo)6 Indeed (and as W. R. Johnson points out), Virgil puts essentially the same question to the Muse at the very beginning of his poem (Aeneid 1.8–11). That question is never answered.7 In his account of philosophers in Athens who were unimpressed by Paul’s talk of resurrection, Luke seems to envisage the Epicureans acting in concert with Stoics (Acts 17:18). This is initially surprising, since Epicureans and Stoics were in disagreement about most things.8 Yet in this particular matter their being yoked together is perhaps understandable since whatever may have been the formal differences between their views as to what happened to the individual at death, it is hard to see what effective difference there was, at least with regard to individual hope or expectation. Thus, while the Stoics, in contrast to the Epicureans, did not insist that at death the soul perished, yet they seem to have attributed to it, as a spark of the original fire, only a temporary afterlife until the rebirth of the universe. At that point, they held, everything would resolve into the primitive fire, whence, in accordance with Heraclitus’ law of eternal return, there would begin another cycle of being (e.g., Diogenes Laertius 7.156–57).9

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That, at least, would be the fate of the generality of humankind, although in the view of some there were exceptions to that. According to Cicero (who in general holds to Stoic views of the world), the soul of the virtuous statesman who has excercised the authority of government in the same way that God rules the universe, that is, for the common good, will escape the recurring conflagrations of the universe. Instead, such a virtuous soul will migrate to enjoy an unending life of joy amid the divine intelligences and the stars (De republica 6.3.3–6.26.29).10 In the category of those who had no hope for individual survival at death we should place the humorist and satirist Lucian of Samosata, who ruthlessly mocks the funeral customs and beliefs of traditional Roman religion but describes with evident respect the simple approach to death of the Stoic philosopher Demonax: When he found that he was no longer able to take care of himself, he repeated to his friends the tag with which the heralds close the festival: The games are done, The crowns all won; No more delay, But haste away, and from that moment abstaining from food, left life as cheerfully as he had lived it. When the end was near, he was asked his wishes about burial. “Oh, do not trouble; scent will summon my undertakers.” “Well, but it would be indecent for the body of so great a man to feed birds and dogs.” “Oh, no harm in making oneself useful in death to anything that lives!” (Life of Demonax 65–66, trans. H. W. and F. G. Fowler) Nevertheless, despite the efforts of Lucretius and Lucian and others, the world that saw the rise of Christianity still gives plenty of evidence that some continued to believe in personal immortality. That does not mean, of course, that they agreed as to what it would involve. Traditional Greco-Roman religion offered various visions of death and what might follow, including punishment for the wicked and a more or less blissful existence for the virtuous. The poet Virgil speaks of the former as inhabiting an “iron realm (durissima regna)” (6.566) ruled over by Cretan Radamanthus, and concludes that, Not if I had a hundred mouths, a hundred tongues, And a voice of iron, could I recount All the crimes or tell all their punishments. (Aeneid 6.625–27, trans. Lombardo11)

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The virtuous he describes dwelling in “regions of joy (locos laetos)” (Aeneid 6.638), where they continue to enjoy the pleasures that they enjoyed in this life: Some are at exercise On the grassy wrestling ground, some contend On the yellow sand, others tread a dance And chant a choral song. And Orpheus, In the long robes of a Thracian priest Accompanies them on his seven-toned lyre . . . . . . their spears Stand fixed in the ground, and their horses Graze unyoked over all the plain. The pleasure they took in arms and chariots When they were alive, in keeping sleek horses, Is still theirs now beneath the earth12 (Aeneid 6.642–46, 652–55, trans. Lombardo13) Virgil, even if personally a nonbeliever, nonetheless in general recounts these traditions with gravity. By contrast, Lucian’s Of Mourning treats the same beliefs with ruthless scorn. His witty, sarcastic comments are worth quoting at length: The vulgar (as philosophers call the generality of mankind), implicitly taking as their text-book the fictions of Homer and Hesiod and other poets, assume the existence of a deep subterranean hole called Hades; spacious, murky, and sunless, but by some mysterious means sufficiently lighted to render all its details visible. Its king is a brother of Zeus, one Pluto; whose name—so an able philologer assures me—contains a complimentary allusion to his ghostly wealth. As to the nature of his government, and the condition of his subjects, the authority allotted to him extends over all the dead, who, from the moment that they come under his control, are kept in unbreakable fetters; Shades are on no account permitted to return to Earth; to this rule there have been only two or three exceptions since the beginning of the world, and these were made for very urgent reasons. His realm is encompassed by vast rivers, whose very names inspire awe: Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon, and the like. Most formidable of all, and first to arrest the progress of the new-comer, is Acheron, that lake which none may pass save by the ferryman’s boat; it is too deep to be waded, too broad for the swimmer, and even defies the flight of birds

death and the afterlife in the greco-roman world beyond israel deceased. At the very beginning of the descent is a gate of adamant: here Aeacus, a nephew of the king, stands on guard. By his side is a three-headed dog, a grim brute; to new arrivals, however, he is friendly enough, reserving his bark, and the yawning horror of his jaws, for the would-be runaway. On the inner shore of the lake is a meadow, wherein grows asphodel; here, too, is the fountain that makes war on memory, and is hence called Lethe. All these particulars the ancients would doubtless obtain from the Thessalian queen Alcestis and her fellow-countryman Protesilaus, from Theseus the son of Aegeus, and from the hero of the Odyssey. These witnesses (whose evidence is entitled to our most respectful acceptance) did not, as I gather, drink of the waters of Lethe; because then they would not have remembered. According to them, the supreme power is entirely in the hands of Pluto and Persephone, who, however, are assisted in the labours of government by a host of underlings: such are the Furies, the Pains, the Fears; such too is Hermes, though he is not always in attendance. Judicial powers are vested in two satraps or viceroys, Minos and Rhadamanthus, both Cretans, and both sons of Zeus. By them all good and just men who have followed the precepts of virtue are sent off in large detachments to form colonies, as it were, in the Elysian Plain, and there to lead the perfect life. Evildoers, on the contrary, are handed over to the Furies, who conduct them to the place of the wicked, where they are punished in due proportion to their iniquities. What a variety of torments is there presented! The rack, the fire, the gnawing vulture; here Ixion spins upon his wheel, there Sisyphus rolls his stone. I have not forgotten Tantalus; but he stands elsewhere, stands parched on the Lake’s very brink, like to die of thirst, poor wretch! Then there is the numerous class of neutral characters; these wander about the meadow; formless phantoms, that evade the touch like smoke. It seems that they depend for their nourishment upon the libations and victims offered by us upon their tombs; accordingly, a Shade who has no surviving friends or relations passes a hungry time of it in the lower world. So profoundly have the common people been impressed with these doctrines that, when a man dies, the first act of his relations is to put a penny into his mouth, that he may have wherewithal to pay the ferryman: they do not stop to inquire what is the local currency, whether Attic or Macedonian or Aeginetan; nor does it occur to them how much better it would be for the departed one if the fare were not forthcoming—because then the ferryman would decline to take him,

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the setting and he would be sent back into the living world. Lest the Stygian Lake should prove inadequate to the requirements of ghostly toilets, the corpse is next washed, anointed with the choicest unguents to arrest the progress of decay, crowned with fresh flowers, and laid out in sumptuous raiment; an obvious precaution, this last; it would not do for the deceased to take a chill on the journey, nor to exhibit himself to Cerberus with nothing on. (Of Mourning 2–13, trans. H. W. and F. G. Fowler) 14

In connection with traditional Greco-Roman beliefs, we should particularly note that heroic life and heroic death had long been understood by some as a prelude to immortality, and even to a kind of divinity. The cult of worshipping heroes is, as Gregory Nagy points out, “a basic historical fact of ancient Greek civilization.”15 With figures such as Achilles their worship as divinities and their translation into a blessed immortality seem to go hand in hand. At death, it seems, they are perceived initially existing as souls separated from the body, which remains in its grave, which in turn becomes a center of the hero’s cult. This would appear to be a “transitional stage of the afterlife, when the psuchē is separated from the body.” But the ultimate stage of the hero’s immortality will be when “in a place like Elysium, body and psuchē can be reintegrated when the Zephyros blows from Okeanos to reanimate men—the word for which is anapsuchein.”16 Then the “happy heroes” will find themselves in lands where “the grain-giving field bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing three times a year” (Hesiod, Works and Days 172–73; trans. Glenn W. Most), elsewhere described as a place where the life of humankind is made easy, and there is neither winter nor ill weather (Iliad 4.561–69). Such views as these are ancient. Clearly, however, they continued to have influence in the early centuries of the Christian era, as is witnessed by a text such as Flavius Philostratus’ Heroikos, composed in the first half of the second century.17 Philostratus’ hero Protesilaus has all the features of which we have spoken. In the heroic past, he was brought back from death to life because of his love for his bride Laodameia; now he lives, and he shows himself to those who are initiated into his cult (Heroikos 2.5–11). Indeed, in the view of his initiate, “he lives here, and we farm together.” Moreover, Protesilaus himself reveals to his initiate that “he died at Troy because of Helen, but came to life again in Phthia because he loved Laodameia” (2.8–9; trans. Maclean and Aitken).18 With the divinity of heroes we should certainly also associate the divinity of dead emperors, expressed and reflected in various imperial cults throughout the empire, an association that is confirmed by the use of identical vocabulary in both types of exaltation.19

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It will be noted that such views of a blessed death involve at least in some measure a continuation and exaltation of the joys and passions of this life, and I mean “this life” as the particular life that individuals had previously enjoyed or endured through their bodies, their senses, and their passions. Indeed, Virgil goes out of his way to make precisely that point (Aeneid 6.653–55). The same may be said of the expectations of life after death characteristic of traditional Egyptian religion, which evidently persisted with remarkable consistency and stability well into the Christian era. In Egypt itself, in the latter half of the first millennium before the Christian era and during its early centuries, a greater proportion of Egyptians, native traditional or Hellenized, were embalmed than ever before, and people went to great lengths to give the deceased a burial that was more or less according to the old customs. Such rites were evidently designed to assure for the departed, if their lives were judged sufficiently moral by Osiris,20 a blessed future life. This hoped-for everlasting life clearly involved, albeit in a higher form, many of the joys, and possibly even some of the responsibilities, of this life. Such an expectation is expressed, for example, in the heading to Spell 110 in the so-called Book of the Dead, which speaks of Having power there, being glorious there, ploughing there and reaping, eating there, drinking there, making love there; doing everything that used to be done on earth.21 Understandably, therefore, some scholars refer to the new life that the Egyptians envisaged as “resurrection”—as, incidentally, did Saint Augustine.22 There were in the ancient world others, however, who also believed in life after death, but scoffed at all such teaching as we have been considering so far. Platonists were clear that there was immortality only for what they regarded as the essence of our true humanity, namely, the rational soul. Therefore the important thing was for the soul to flee from such things as passion and the material senses, which were like a tomb to it. Therefore we ought to try to escape from earth to the dwelling of the gods as quickly as we can; and to escape is to become like God, so far as this is possible; and to become like God is to become righteous and holy, and wise. (Plato, Theaetetus 176a, trans. Henry North Fowler)23 Plato, following Socrates, believed that we are, as individuals, to be identified with our reason and our ability to think, and that since the reasoning intellect

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is immortal, each of us is essentially immortal. In Plato’s view therefore the body and the soul occupy quite different places in the hierarchy of existence. The soul is of the divine realm, imperceptible and immortal. The body is of the earth, perceptible and mortal. Evidently, therefore, there can be no question of life after death for the body or anything connected with it.24 According to Philostratus this is precisely the form of immortality taught and experienced by the first-century teacher and miracle worker Apollonius of Tyana, who, after his death, spoke as follows to a young man who doubted “the true doctrine”: Immortal is the soul, and is not yours But Providence’s. When the body wastes, The soul starts like a racehorse from the gate, And nimbly leaping mingles with light air, Hating its fearful, heavy servitude. “This,” says Philostratus, “is Apollonius’s clear pronouncement on the mysteries of the soul, enabling us with courage and knowledge of our own natures to journey to the place where the Fates station us” (Life of Apollonius of Tyana 8.31.3; trans. Christopher P. Jones). Although official Roman religion did not encourage any particular view of the afterlife nor place any special emphasis on what happened to individuals after death, rites that commemorated and made offerings to the departed did have a place in it. Thus while the Parentalia (in February) and the Lemuria (in May) were in essence household and domestic festivals focusing on the family’s own ancestors, there were also public ceremonies associated with these festivals wherein a Vestal Virgin carried out rituals for the dead.25 Some of the newer religious cults—such as those of Isis and Mithras—seem to have placed greater emphasis on the issue. Isis promised immortality to her followers.26 Followers of Mithras appear to have envisaged the soul of the initiate as rising even during his lifetime further and further from the things of earth, and this was probably understood as continuing after death.27 Evidently, then, in the world that saw the rise of Christianity, beyond Israel as within it, there were varieties of views regarding the fate of the dead. Death might be seen as friend or as enemy; as prelude to oblivion or as the beginning of new life; as leading to immortality for the rational soul or to an eternity of hunting and feasting; to ignorance or to wisdom28; to a renewed life that has been described by some as “resurrection” or to an eternity of punishment. A balance of views is classically—and nobly—represented in Socrates’ closing remarks to the jury in the Apology, a representative statement of humanism which continued (and continues) to exercise influence centuries, and even millennia, after its composition:

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Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things:—either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true. (Apology 40c–41c, trans. Benjamin Jowett) One thing, however, my brief survey has not so far considered—namely, evidence of hope for or belief in the kind of “resurrection” or “resuscitation”

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that would represent not just (as in Egyptian thanatology) the next stage of life, to which death naturally leads, but rather (as in Israel) the reversal or undoing of death. Is there such evidence? Was there such hope outside of the later Jewish tradition? Reimarus, the eighteenth-century rationalist and skeptic, believed that the answer to that question was a clear “no.” Indeed, Reimarus saw that difference as a reason why Jews might be inclined to take seriously the Christian claim about Jesus’ resurrection, whereas Romans would regard it as “simply ridiculous.”29 Reimarus’ opinion has been broadly shared—even perhaps taken for granted—by many biblical scholars. Oscar Cullmann, in a very influential paper, though starting from presuppositions vastly different from those of Reimarus, came to conclusions not merely about the Romans but about the Greco-Roman world in general that were much the same as his.30 C. K. Barrett, commenting on Luke’s description of philosophical mockery when Paul preaches resurrection at Athens (Acts 17.32), is content to observe that Luke “knows the Greek belief that the dead do not stand up,” and goes on to cite a number of significant texts from Greek literature that make that point.31 N. T. Wright is clear that the finality and irreversibility of death was generally acknowledged throughout the non-Jewish world. In Wright’s view, The classic statement is that of Achilles as he addresses the griefstricken Priam, mourning his son Hector whom Achilles has killed: You must endure, and not be broken hearted. Lamenting your son will do no good at all. You will be dead yourself before you bring him back to life.32 Nor, declares Hector’s mother, could Achilles raise up his dead companion Patroclus, despite dragging her son round his body.33 The tradition is maintained unbroken through the hallowed Athenian dramatists. Here, from Aeschylus’ Eumenides, is Apollo, speaking at the foundation of the Athenian high court, the Areopagus: Once a man has died, and the dust has soaked up his blood, there is not resurrection.34 So too Electra, mourning her father Agamemnon, is reminded by the Chorus that one cannot call him back (the word used is anastaseis, ‘resurrect’ him) from Hades, either by weeping or lamentation.35 Hence, assumptions about the finality of death dominate even stories that might on the surface appear to tell against them, such as that of Apollonius of Tyana restoring to life a young woman who had died on the eve of her marriage. The story appears in Philostratus’ Life, and is well known to students of the

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New Testament, for it is often compared to gospel stories of Jesus raising the dead.36 The difference, of course, is that the New Testament accounts make no doubt that Jesus has actually raised the dead.37 Philostratus is much more hesitant. [Apollonius] may have seen a spark of life in her which the doctors had not noticed, since apparently the sky was drizzling and steam was coming from her face, or he may have revived and restored her life when it was extinguished, but the explanation of this has proved unfathomable, not just to me but to the bystanders. (Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4.45, trans. Christopher W. Jones) The writer’s caution speaks for itself, as does his willingness—even eagerness—to point out that there might well be—indeed, probably is—some perfectly rational explanation for the whole thing. In short, it is quite clear that Philostratus does not really believe that death can be reversed or expect us to believe it, even though he tells the tale. “This,” says Wright, “was presumably a regular ancient attitude. If something like this happened, one should assume that either death has been wrongly diagnosed (as with Callirhoe) or that some kind of primitive kiss-of-life technique has been effective.”38 In other words, “Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was known to be false.”39 We need not dispute that this was the generally accepted belief about death.40 Nor, indeed, need we dispute that this was the general way in which death was actually experienced. How else, indeed, do any of us experience death? The fact remains, however, that pagans did tell stories which hinted at another possibility. The story of Apollonius’ raising the girl was obviously one such story, however much Philostratus may have wished to imply that it was not. Indeed, the fact that telling the story could be understood as suggesting that in this case death had been reversed is clearly the reason for Philostratus’ embarrassment in recording it. Among the best known stories of death reversed were, however, those that came from mythical antiquity. The stories of Orpheus and Eurydice, of Aesclepius, of Alcestis, and of Protesilaus (of whom we have already spoken in the context of hero cults) are all examples.41 Perhaps needless to say, these stories were widely known and were handed on by many storytellers and in many versions. Here is how the four I have mentioned are presented by Apollodorus the Historian, writing at some time in the first or second century of the Christian era:42 Orpheus . . . practised minstrelsy, and by his songs moved stones and trees. And when his wife Eurydice died, bitten by a snake, he went

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the setting down to Hades in the hope of bringing her up, and he persuaded Pluto to send her up. The god promised to do so, if on the way Orpheus would not turn round until he should come to his own house. But he disobeyed and turning round beheld his wife, and she turned back. (Library 1.3.2, trans. Sir James George Frazer)43 Apollo . . . obtained as a favour of the Fates that, when Admetus should be about to die, he might be released from death if someone should choose voluntarily to die for him. And when the day of his death came neither his father nor his mother would die for him, but Alcestis died in his stead. But the Maiden [Persephone, queen of the underworld] sent her up again, or, as some say, Hercules fought with Hades and brought her up to him. (Library 1.9.15, trans. Sir James George Frazer)

(The latter version—that Hercules fought with death—is, more or less, the version presented by Euripides in his play, Alcestis;44 the former is implied by Plato in a passage from the Symposium that I shall quote later in this chapter.45) [Apollo brought his child Aesculapius] to Chiron, the centaur, by whom he was brought up and taught the arts of healing and hunting. And having become a surgeon, and carried the art to a great pitch, he not only prevented some from dying, but even raised up (anēgeiren) the dead . . . But Zeus, fearing that men might acquire the healing art from him and so come to the rescue of each other, smote him with a thunderbolt. (Library 3.10.3–4, trans. Sir James George Frazer)46 Of the Greeks the first to land from his ship was Protesilaus, and having slain not a few of the barbarians, he fell by the hand of Hector. His wife Laodamia loved him even after his death, and she made an image of him and consorted with it. The gods had pity on her, and Hermes brought up Protesilaus from Hades. On seeing him, Laodamia thought it was himself returned from Troy, and she was glad; but when he was carried back to Hades, she stabbed herself to death. (Epitome of the Library 3.30, trans. Sir James George Frazer) (According to the gentler version of this story provided by Philostratus, Protesilaus, who “died at Troy because of Helen, but came to life again in Phthia because he loved Laodameia,” then “persuaded his wife to follow him” [Heroikos 2.9, 10, trans. Jennifer K. Berenson Maclean and Ellen Bradshaw Aitken]47). Now we must not claim more for these stories than they claim for themselves. Their existence does not alter the fact that the general consensus of

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ancient pagan witness appears to be against what they imply. They are, moreover, only stories of “resurrection” (or resuscitation) in a limited sense. Those who are raised die again. They are in no way stories of eschatological resurrection as that hope evolved in Israel, or of resurrection in the Egyptian sense noticed by Augustine. All that must be granted. Critics such as N. T. Wright, however, appear to go much further. Thus, if I understand Wright correctly, he is clear that in terms of what people may have hoped or feared about death, the existence of these stories has no significance whatever. Alcestis may have come back (in the ancient legend) but she was the exception in the light of which the prevailing rule stands out the more clearly. Thus, though the story, and similar tales of heroes and legendary figures from long ago, continued to be known throughout the classical period, they never became popular reference points as did the great Homeric scenes of Achilles and Odysseus. No tombstones suggest that maybe this corpse will be one of the lucky ones (would they, in any case, have thought coming back such a lucky thing?) One Alcestis . . . certainly made no dent in the ruling assumption, from Homer to Hadrian and beyond. Life after death, yes; various possibilities open to souls in Hades and beyond, yes; actual resurrection, no.48 I am not sure, however, that the evidence supports quite such a clear conclusion as that. The fact that those scholars who have suggested that there was something like a “tradition of bodily resurrection” within paganism have overstated or wrongly stated their case—I think particularly of Stanley E. Porter and Paul M. Fullmer49—does not mean that there is no case to be answered. To begin with, I would suggest that we really do not have to seek far for the “dent” that stories such as that of Alcestis made in the “ruling assumption” about the irreversibility of death. Evidently, they are the dent. Each is an implicit denial of that “ruling assumption.” Or, to put the matter positively, each is an implicit assertion, first, that whatever Platonists might have said, there were conditions when human beings would want death to be reversed (in other words, when they would have thought that such a thing would be “lucky”), and, second, that however difficult or unlikely such reversal might be, it could happen if the conditions were right, and occasionally even had happened. Evidently those conditions included divine permission: the dead were not to be raised unless gods granted it. Again, I am not at all convinced that these stories—and, in particular, the story of Alcestis—“never became popular reference points.” Surely Alcestis (a woman!) never attained that status as did Achilles and Odysseus (men!), but she does seem to have attained it at some level. That, clearly, is how Euripides

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saw her as early as the fifth century before Christ. Although the only dramatization of her story prior to his own of which we have clear evidence is a play by Phrynicus (a slightly older contemporary of Aeschylus) of which only a fragment survives,50 nonetheless, Euripides clearly intended us to take seriously as vaticinium ex eventu the comments of his Chorus on Alcestis’ death: Often indeed will minstrels celebrate you in song, extolling your glory both on the seven-toned mountain lyre and in hymns of praise for the voice alone, when in due course at Sparta the season of the Carnean month comes round, lit by the rich splendor of the all-night moon, and at rich and prosperous Athens as well: such a theme of songs, Alcestis, have you in dying left to bards in days to come. (Euripides, Alcestis 445–54; trans. D. J. Conacher) Not everything that Euripides says here is entirely clear to us,51 but the general implication surely is, and it is already borne out in Plato’s Symposium (composed c. 384), wherein Phaedrus treats Alcestis’ legend as a supreme example of the power of Love: Love will make men dare to die for their beloved—love alone; and women as well as men. Of this, Alcestis, the daughter of Pelias, is a monument to all Hellas; for she was willing to lay down her life on behalf of her husband, when no one else would, although he had a father and mother; but the tenderness of her love so far exceeded theirs, that she made them seem to be strangers in blood to their own son, and in name only related to him; and so noble did this action of hers appear to the gods, as well as to men, that among the many who have done virtuously she is one of the very few to whom, in admiration of her noble action, they have granted the privilege of returning alive to earth; such exceeding honour is paid by the gods to the devotion and virtue of love. (Symposium 179b, trans. Benjamin Jowett) Artists of the period that saw the rise of Christianity repeatedly portray aspects of the Alcestis legend. They show her as the type of the faithful wife or else portray Hercules leading her, hooded, from the tomb. In the former capacity, for example, she appears in Propertius’ Elegies, where the poet apparently considers it enough to refer to her as “praiseworthy . . . Admetus’ spouse (felix Admeti coniunx)” (2.6.23)52 without even giving her name. So certain is he that his audience will know who she is! In the same role she appears in the small catacomb of Vibia on the Via Appia Antica in Rome.53 In the latter role—as returned from the dead—she is found in the Via Latina catacomb, also in Rome,

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where pagan icons appear in close proximity to biblical icons.54 In both roles she appears on the sarcophagus of Metilia Acte and Junius Euhodus (about 150–175 A.D.) (see figure 1), and in the Alcestis sarcophagus at the Chateau of Saint Aignan (about 170–189).55 The art historian Eve d’Ambra is surely correct in her estimate of the significance of such portrayals: the myth “demonstrated that death could be defeated, that the boundaries between this world and the next could be crossed in both directions.”56 Exactly. In other words, there were tombstones suggesting that this corpse might be one of the lucky ones. Lucian’s mocking reference to Alcestis and to others who were said to have returned from the underworld (cited earlier in this chapter) is clear evidence that he disapproved of her story becoming an icon. But the mere expression of his disapproval, together with the fact that he mentions her first—before the heroes Protesilaus, Theseus, or Odysseus—surely all this reflects the fact that she was such an icon for some, whether Lucian approved or not, and Lucian knew it.57

FIGURE

1. Detail from the sarcophagus of Metilia Acte and Junius Euhodus,

from Ostia, ca. A.D. 150–75: marble, 79 x 210 cm, showing Alccstis with head veiled being brought back from the underworld and restored to her husband by Hercules. Museo Chiaramonti, Vatican Museums, Rome. From Eve D’Ambra, Roman Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 125, fig. 84. Preprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.

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I have said that in the telling of these stories, denial of the “ruling assumption” and assertion of its opposite are “implicit.” In the case of one telling, however, they are clearly quite explicit. In Euripides’ Alcestis, the dramatist seems to go out of his way to have Admetus bluntly present the “ruling assumption.” “It’s not possible for the dead to come back to the light of day . . . (ouk esti tous thanontas eis phaos molein)” (1076; trans. D. J. Conacher). The matter could hardly be stated more clearly. But Admetus’ assertion is, in fact, a moment of fine dramatic irony. We, the audience, already know perfectly well that what he is saying about the dead is not, in this case, true. Alcestis, whom he mourns, has already been brought back from death. The right conditions for the normal rule to be broken have been met. We must not claim too much for these stories. But we must not claim too little. They clearly show that from time to time the thought of other possibilities than those permitted within the “ruling assumption” did exist and resonate in the minds and hearts of men and women outside Israel. Paul Ricoeur noted that some narratives are by their nature “interpretative,” by which he meant that “the ideological interpretation these narratives wish to convey is not superimposed on the narrative by the narrator but is, instead, incorporated into the very strategy of the narrative.”58 The legend of Alcestis is such a narrative, which is why it has continued to fascinate creative minds across the centuries.59 It is an account of Death’s defeat. To place a symbol of that narrative upon the tomb of a loved one was therefore to utter a plea for resurrection, however inchoate, uncertain, or fragile that plea might be. However fleeting or uncertain their hope, however contrary to the prevailing rule or normal experience, those who used this symbol in this way were envisaging a universe in which it was just possible that the Christians’ central claim was not false.60 And indeed, if these stories did not show us that some such possibilities as these existed for the pagan imagination, we should nonetheless have to assume that such possibilities did exist, all the same. For, pace Reimarus, one of the undisputable facts of history is that the Christian claim, when made among non-Jews, did meet with some success. That could not have happened if that claim had been, from the pagan viewpoint, as “simply ridiculous” as Reimarus said it was. Reimarus was a shrewd observer, but in this matter he was perhaps not quite shrewd enough. But I anticipate. It is time to ask, “What then, exactly, was the Christians’ ‘central claim?’ ” This will occupy me in the following chapter.

3 The Christian Claim

The first Christians, I have said, when asked why they had come into existence, frequently gave an answer that was something to do with Jesus having been raised from the dead. When faced with the task of explaining, proclaiming, or defending this belief, they appear to have appealed to two kinds of tradition: on the one hand, to a disappearance tradition – that the women of their company had found Jesus’ tomb to be empty a short while after his death; and on the other, to appearance traditions – that numbers of them (first the women, and then the men) had subsequently been encountered by the risen Jesus.1 The early Christians stressed, and continued to stress in various strands of tradition and styles of witness, that the Jesus by whom they were thus encountered was the same Jesus as they had known before—the Jesus who had been baptized by John in the Jordan, the Jesus whom they had followed in Galilee and on the road to Jerusalem, the Jesus who had been one among them, notoriously sharing fellowship of the table with them and with all who would eat with him, the Jesus who had prophesied the coming of God’s kingdom, sent his disciples to proclaim that coming, and then been arrested and crucified.2 In other words, as Michael Ramsey said, “the first Christians lived in a double perspective: the risen Jesus at the right hand of God and the Jesus of Galilee and Jerusalem. It is from this double perspective that all the Apostolic literature was written.”3

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In speaking of their encounters with this risen Jesus, the first Christians seem to have gone out of their way not to present them as experiences that could be understood as simply “spiritual” or “religious,” as events purely internal or personal; nor did they speak of them in ways that might suggest they had received something—even if it were truly from God—that was entirely visionary or otherworldly, an annunciation or a theophany, like Gabriel appearing to Mary. In flat contradiction to all such views of what they might have seen or experienced, they claimed that the risen Jesus had eaten with his followers (Luke 24:42-43; Acts 1.4;4 10:41), had shown his wounds so that they might be touched (John 20:20, 27), had been embraced (Matt 28:9; John 20:175), and had even cooked for them (John 21:9–13)! That there are, as we shall see, probably apologetic elements in some of these narratives is,6 as far as my present point is concerned, irrelevant. I simply note just how those who wrote the various narratives (apologetic or not) chose to present the Risen One, and on that issue there can be no dispute. In any case, we need to be careful about what can be meant in this context by “apologetic.” There arises the question, “apologetic” with respect to whom? The physicality of gospel accounts of the resurrection appearances was important to those who wished to make clear that the risen Jesus was not merely his angel or a ghost; that same insistence on physicality was also an embarrassment for many Christians in the period that saw Christianity’s rise, and their more sophisticated critics were not slow to seize on it.7 Even among their supporters, some (presumably those who considered themselves sophisticated) seem on occasion to have sought to smooth the difficulty away, as we shall see in our examination of 1 Corinthians 15.8 Nevertheless, either way, apologetic or embarrassment, it was clear that the accounts insisted on that physicality. Or did they? Some critics have, indeed, tried to get the evangelists and apostles somewhat off this particular hook by pointing to the use of the verb horaō in the resurrection accounts. The word is certainly used with reference to resurrection appearances of Jesus (e.g., Mark 16:7; Matt 28:7; Luke 24:34; John 20:18, 25; 1 Cor 15:5–8), and so the suggestion is made that this expression normally implies only a vision or an apparition.9 It will not do. The word horaō in itself implies nothing of the kind. It tells us that somebody “saw” someone or something (e.g., Aristotle, Poetics 23 [1460a14]) or, in the passive, that somebody or something “was seen” or “appeared” (e.g., LXX 3 Kgdms 3:16); but always the manner of that “seeing” or “appearing”— whether it is straightforward and natural, or visionary, or involving discernment—all that must be gathered from the context,10 and the contexts, as regards the narratives of the Risen Jesus, are not at all favorable to excluding all physical elements. On the contrary, the narratives themselves regularly insist on such elements.11

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In this connection, two other Greek verbs that the first Christians persistently used in connection with their claims are striking. These are egeirō (which normally means “to wake up” and, like its English equivalent, can be used transitively or intransitively12), and anistēmi (which normally means “to stand up” and again, like its English equivalent, can be transitive, “to cause to stand or be erect,” or intransitive, “to stand up from a recumbent or sitting position”13). As N. T. Wright has shown us, when the ancients, whether Jews or pagans, used these words or their cognates in connection with the dead, they seem invariably to have meant something like returning to a life that was at least in some measure continuous with previous life, after a period of being dead.14 This is what they meant, whether or not they regarded such a thing as possible. They did not use these words to claim “the immortality of the soul,”15 nor did they associate them with experiences of the departed that were purely visionary or personal, or with coming to understand the real meaning of what had happened to someone, or with claiming that someone’s teaching lived on even though they had died, or that God would eventually raise them in the age to come, or with anything of that kind. All these were ideas with which, as we have seen and will continue to see, different parts of the ancient world were perfectly familiar, and there is not the slightest reason to suppose that the first Christians would not have been able to articulate similar ideas about Jesus if they had wished to, or that anyone would necessarily have found such claims absurd if they had been made. But Jesus’ followers did not do that. On the contrary, in one way or another, they seem consistently, and despite the obvious problem that it raised, to have talked about Jesus’ having being “raised from the dead.” So much may be said with regard to the material and this-worldly elements that persistently form a part of the early Christian claim—elements that, as we have noted, in the eyes of some of early Christianity’s more sophisticated critics seemed, indeed, somewhat crudely material and this worldly.16 Yet despite those elements—or perhaps we would better say, alongside those elements—the first Christian claims give us no grounds whatever to suppose that they thought that Jesus now came to them merely as he had been among them before. In other words, they do not seem to have thought that he was merely someone whose corpse had been resuscitated, so as to return him to life as he had previously known it. There are, as we have already noticed, examples of such resuscitation in the Jewish Scriptures, and there are also examples of it in the New Testament, notably, in the Gospels, namely, the stories of raising of Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:21–24, 35–43 par.),17 the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11–17), and Lazarus (John 11:1–44).18 In the New Testament as in the Old, such persons’ restoration is invariably seen as an amazing miracle and a sign of God’s power. But, also in the New Testament as in the Old, these are restorations to a life that is

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essentially still subject to the same weaknesses and limitations as it was before, a life that is still involved in sin, and a life that will still end in death. Emphatically, and for all their material and this-worldly elements, this is not at all what the New Testament witnesses are talking about when they speak of the Risen Jesus. Quite clearly, the Risen Jesus is in a different category of life: indeed, he now possesses the life of God. So the limitations of time and space no longer apply to him. He comes and goes as he wills, sometimes through locked doors, and no one sees how (Luke 24:31, 36; John 20:19, 26). Often at first encounter he is not recognized, even by those who love him very much (Luke 24:16, John 20:14). Either he is already exalted to God, in that “all authority in heaven and on earth” has already been given to him (Matt 28:18), or else he is in the process of being exalted to God (Luke 24:51; Acts 2:32–33; John 20:17; compare Mark 14:62). These claims, moreover, do not merely mark the records of the evangelists, which at least in their present form are among the later New Testament statements. They mark the earliest among the New Testament’s assertions about him. Being risen from the dead he is “in power,” as Paul puts it (Rom 1:419), or, as he says later in the same letter, “we know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God” (Rom 6:9–10). In his Letter to the Philippians, Paul goes even further: the “Philippians hymn” (Phil 2:6–11)20 reminds his hearers of Jesus’ obedience in accepting the death of the cross and continues “therefore God highly exalted21 him, and gave to him the Name that is above every name” (vv. 8–9). For a Pharisaic Jew there is of course only one name that can possibly be described as “above every name,” and it is the name of God (adonai / kurios) (vv. 9, 11).22 From later strata of tradition we might cite Ephesians 1:18–21: Hebrews 1:3–4 and 10:24–28; 1 Peter 3:18–22; and Revelation 1:17–18. All this is why, in connection with the resurrection tradition, I believe we should have little patience with questions about whether the appearances of the risen Jesus could have been photographed, and so on.23 It seems to me that such questions, even by the fact of being put, show in the questioners a failure to recognize the limits which the tradition itself sets on the degree to which the physicality of the Risen One may be judged or understood by any normal standard. How then shall we categorize these experiences of the Risen Jesus since they are clearly something more than, or other than, either resuscitation, manifestations of a spirit, or signs of the survival of an immortal soul? Overall, the various ways in which different testimonies and narratives describe the Risen One fit best (though not perfectly) into the “third option” kind of “being raised” that we noted earlier when discussing the hope of Israel.24 In other words, the first followers of Jesus seem to have experienced his “being raised” as involving

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the physical, but more precisely as involving a transformed physicality—a transformed physicality that they perceived in terms of Jewish resurrection belief and Jewish eschatological hope. It is something of a truism to point out that in coming to the New Testament from the Scriptures of Israel we find both continuity and discontinuity. But that is certainly true of the early Christian talk of Jesus’ resurrection. On the one hand, as I have just said, the first Christians spoke of Jesus’ resurrection in ways that involved Jewish resurrection belief and Jewish eschatological hope. That was the continuity. On the other hand, Jesus’ first followers clearly developed the resurrection hope of Judaism—and this was the discontinuity.25 To be precise, the early Christians no longer saw themselves standing in the same relationship as before to the “last things” (ta eschata) of Jewish eschatology. For them, the time when God would raise the dead and renew the world in the “Great Divine Clean Up” was no longer simply a future event, as it was for the writers of 2 Maccabees, or the Wisdom of Solomon, or 1 Enoch 108. Rather, the Great Divine Clean Up had already started, and it had turned out to be a series of events that had already had a beginning and would at some time in the future have an end. In the meantime, Christians were living somewhere in the middle—somewhere between what had happened “already” and what was “not yet.” Thus, on the one hand, as we have noted, they claimed that Jesus the Messiah had already risen from the dead and ascended into union with God. They also claimed that they themselves, by virtue of their position as Jesus’ people, were already in possession of the Spirit (e.g., Matt 28:19–20; Mark 13:11; Luke 11:13; 12:11–12; John 20:22; Acts 2:1–4; Rom 8:9–17; 1 Cor 15:4–13; Rev 1:10) and that they therefore already experienced the forgiveness of sins and a way of living based on that (e.g., Matt 1:21; Mark 1:4; Luke 1:77; John 20:22–23; Acts 2:38; Rom 8:1–2; 1 Cor 15:17; 1 John 3:1–2). On the other hand, they also claimed that they continued to look for a final and complete general resurrection, for Jesus’ final coming, for his parousia, and for a degree of union with God and with Jesus himself (Rom 8:38–39; 2 Cor 4:14, 17, Phil 3:20–21, 1 Thess 4:16–17), of which Jesus’ own exaltation and their present experiences of renewed life “in the Spirit” were, as Paul put it, only a “first-fruit” (aparchē) or “down payment” (arrabōn) (Rom 8:23; 1 Cor 15:20–28;26 2 Cor 5:5; cf. Eph 1:13–14). As writers later than Paul expressed it, inasmuch as believers witnessed now to the sufferings of Christ, so they would be sharers also in his resurrection and partakers in “a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet 1:5; cf. 5:1; Rev 7:14–17). Their final destiny, following from the gifts that God had already given them, was to become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4; cf. Col 3:3–4; 1 John 3:1–4).27

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the setting

Always implicit in this narrative, and in some versions explicit, was a step that I have not so far spelled out, namely, that for the present the resurrection appearances of Jesus, at least in their original form, had ended (explicit at Acts 1:9–11,28 and probably 1 Cor 15:829; implicit at Matt 28:20;30 John 21:22–2331). Certainly the Risen One was still with his church, and his presence—what later theologians would come to speak of as his “sacramental” presence—could be spoken of in many ways. Thus, for example, his followers were united with him through baptism into his death (Rom 6:4). He came to them and summoned them in personal revelation (2 Cor 12:9), in challenge to new work (Acts 22:18– 21; 23.11), and for prophecy (Rev 1:12–20). They knew him by faith and in hope, though not by sight, and were to be blessed in that faith (John 20:29; 1 Pet 1:8–9; cf. Rom 8:24–25). He was present to them through the Spirit that he sent to them, the Paraclete, the comforter (John 14:16–21). Indeed his spirit was within those who believed in him (Rom 8:9–10). All this granted, all these modes of Jesus’ presence admitted, the fact remained that he had for the present ceased to be with his followers as he had been with them in the first resurrection appearances. Precisely why this change had come about, the texts do not say. Either those who wrote them did not care, or they did not know, or perhaps both. The texts do, however, tell us something else that their authors do seem to have regarded as important, which is that the present, more limited experience of Jesus’ presence was only for the present. It was an interim stage, not the final stage. “This Jesus, who was received up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you saw him go” (Acts 1:11; cf. Mark 8:38 par.; 13:26 par.; John 21:21–23; 2 Cor 5:10; Phil 3:20–21, 1 Thess 4:16–17; 1 John 2.28; Rev 7:14–17; 21:21–24; 22:3–5). What later theology would refer to as the “sacramental” presence of Christ with the church was merely a digression, a “detour” as Robert Jenson puts it.32 The full and final nature of our experiencing Jesus’ presence would be that as he had been present to his followers at the time of his resurrection, so he would be present in the same mode to all believers at his final coming, his parousia. Some scholars refer to such early Christian views as I have been describing, and to the sum total of this narrative, as “inaugurated eschatology.” The phrase is cumbersome and unlovely, but yes, it does more or less say what needs to be said. Moreover, what was being expressed here was also a “collaborative eschatology.”33 That is to say, while for these believers the foundation of “the last things” was still, of course, God’s mighty act, just as Israel had always said it would be, yet in this version the faithful also had a role to play and a job to do as witnesses to that mighty act. Just as during Jesus’ ministry those who followed him had been sent out to proclaim the coming kingdom (Mark 6:7–13;

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Matt 9:35–10:33; Luke 9:1–6), so now they are sent again, this time to witness to the Risen One (Mark 16:7, paralleled at Matt 28:7, 10, 19–20; Luke 24:46–49; John 20:17; Acts 1:7–8; 2:32; Rom 1:1–8; 1 Cor 1:1; 9:16; Gal 1:15–16; cf. Mark 13:9–11 par.) and to lead a life consistent with that calling (e.g., Matt 28:20; John 21:13–16; Rom 12–13). This, then, broadly summarized, was the early Christian claim, as reflected in the various documents that came to make up the New Testament. But I emphasize “broadly.” Of course individual witnesses had their particular emphases and interests, and some present one aspect of the matter rather than another. Let us then move on from this general summary to examine in more detail some of those individual witnesses and to consider how they fit with the overall pattern of belief and hope that I have described.

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PART II

Witnesses Introducing the Witnesses

In what follows, I wish to present five of the main New Testament witnesses to the resurrection. My main purpose at this point is explanatory – to allow these witnesses to speak for themselves. Therefore the commentary and notes will for the most part be devoted to matters of explication (“What were the writers saying? How might they hope to be understood? What did this particular idiom generally mean?”) rather than historicity or credibility (“Did this happen? Did the writers know what they were talking about?”). These latter kinds of question I reserve until Part III, after we have done our best to hear the witnesses. That granted, it must be conceded that inevitably there is some overlap between the two kinds of question—most evidently when the issue of historical record is bound up with the issue of genre (“Were the writers of these texts claiming to offer to us, at least to some extent, straightforward accounts of things that had happened to them? Or were they offering us allegories or parables or symbols? How did they expect to be heard?”) Still, so far as I can, I shall try, even when touching upon these areas, to maintain my proposed distinction. I hope that my main text, read alone, will constitute a coherent exposition of the passages under consideration. I reserve for the endnotes most of the questions that lie behind such exposition— textual, grammatical, source- and literary-critical, and the like. Occasionally, when such a question seems to be of particular importance or interest (as, for example, the meaning of haptō at John 20:17), I bring it into the main text.

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4 Paul

Saint Paul is evidently the first Christian theologian, and arguably the greatest. His letters—both those generally acknowledged to be his, and those attributed to him by tradition—are invariably responses to particular circumstances and situations rather than presentations of a system. Yet they have provided a basis for subsequent theological reflection in virtually every Christian tradition, and they have been able to do this because underlying their variety of subject and expression we can discern a single fundamental and consistently held belief: namely, that the crucified Jesus is Son of God and exalted Lord. That conviction came to Paul in a moment of revelation and insight on the Damascus Road, and from that moment he continued to reflect on what it meant for him (as one summoned to proclaim it to the nations) and for all. Theology is not mathematics, and certain kinds of consistency are not to be expected. A theologian must be something of a poet, working with symbols, aspirations, and vision, rather than a scientist working with (in principle) quantifiable data. Here Solomon Schechter’s often-quoted witticism about the rabbis has its place— they had their faults, but consistency was not one of them.1 Yet Schechter was consciously indulging in hyperbole. Certainly he did not think that the rabbis were merely incoherent. The subtitle of his book, Major Concepts of the Talmud, and, indeed, its whole tenor is a demonstration to the contrary. So it is with Paul. When we have granted that we do not expect or find in him the consistency of

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schoolman or scholastic, we have not thereby granted that he is incoherent. His writings are, indeed, (in the well-known phraseology of Jan Christian Beker) “contingent”—that is to say, they are addressed to particular situations and people—which gives them their occasional feeling of incoherence. Yet it is certainly my conviction—as it is also Beker’s—that fundamentally they are nonetheless “coherent.” They all relate to and follow from an underlying core of conception and belief.2 And that, of course, is the reason, and the only possible reason, why they have fascinated sensitive and creative imaginations over twenty centuries and continue to do so. Paul’s purpose in his letters is evidently not, in general, to inform his hearers about the life of Jesus but to assist and encourage them in living the life of Christian discipleship. Therefore, as is hardly surprising, the letters do not contain much narrative about Jesus. But it does not follow from that either that Paul knew nothing of Jesus’ life or that he was not interested in it.3 Far from being uninterested in or ignorant of Jesus’ life and teaching, the fact is that when it suits his purpose, Paul more than once alludes to traditions that are evidently closely related to those in the canonical gospels (e.g., Rom 1:3; Gal 4:4; Rom 9:5; 1 Cor 7:10–11; 11:23–25; Phil 2:8; 1 Cor 15:3–7). Moreover, as Richard Hays has pointed out, there is underlying Paul’s entire theology a “narrative structure” or “sacred story,” and this story is “about Jesus Christ.”4 This “narrative structure” evidently included Christ’s death and resurrection.

1. Corinthians 15 First Corinthians 15 is the climax of the letter that we call “the first letter to the Corinthians” (but see 1 Cor 5:9), apparently written to the Corinthian church from Ephesus (16:8) at some time during the years 53 to 55.5 Paul’s purpose, as it appears, is to answer those in the Corinthian church who claim that there is “no resurrection from the dead” (15:12). There were, as we have seen, many in the Hellenistic world who naturally thought of what was truly and essentially human only in terms of “the soul,” and therefore conceived human survival after death purely in terms of the immortality of the soul.6 People educated in such a tradition will naturally have found difficult, even objectionable, the Jewish notion of bodily resurrection from the dead that Paul preached.7 “Mere flesh and blood,” they will have argued, “cannot possibly inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption.” Within the Corinthian congregations there seem to have been those who reckoned themselves already “spiritual” (pneumatikoi) (2:14–16),8 and perhaps it was members of this group who thought that, by reverting to the notion of a purely “spiritual” immortality

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that had nothing to do with the crudities of flesh and blood, they were merely restating the gospel of Christ in a more sophisticated and, therefore, for sophisticated people, more acceptable form. If so, Paul will have none of it. He argues, on the contrary and as we shall see, that as in Jesus’ own resurrection there was manifested a complete reversal and defeat of death—the raising to new life of one who had truly “died” and had been truly and physically “buried”—so it is to be for humanity. “Sown” as physical beings subject to the limitations and weaknesses of life in the world as we know it, we are in the end to be “raised” as physical beings filled with the Spirit and power of God.9 Paul’s response may conveniently be analyzed under its rhetorical heads.10

1. Exordium (1 Cor 15:1–2) In ancient rhetoric, the exordium (or proem11) generally introduced the subject to be discussed. Paul’s disclosure formula “I make known to you, brothers and sisters” serves to indicate that the previous discussion (on “spiritual gifts”) has ended, and the apostle is now turning to a different matter, which is, indeed, the matter from which the whole letter began, namely, the gospel that he had preached. That gospel was, as he had pointed out, his apostolic raison d’être (1 Cor 1:17). So now he again speaks to the Corinthians of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the word that I proclaimed to you (1 Cor 15:1–2a). This sounds almost like an “appeal for goodwill” (captatio benevolentiae),12 and perhaps in a way it is, but beginning with the expression I make known13 there is surely also an element of that irony to which Paul is more than once moved in his dealings with the Corinthians (1 Cor 4:8, 2 Cor 12:13), for as his narrative makes clear, what he is about to make known to them is something they ought to know already. No doubt the Corinthians do think they stand firm in the gospel, yet if they will not understand, if they insist on denying the hope that the gospel offers, then perhaps they do not stand so firmly as they think or as Paul would wish. So, yes, this is the gospel through which they stand, unless—but surely it cannot be?—you believed in vain! (1 Cor 15:2b).

2. Narration (1 Cor 15:3–11) Paul begins his narration (a statement of facts that will provide a basis for the ensuing argument14) by noting that in one sense he is not different from the Corinthians: for I delivered to you as of first importance15 what I in turn had

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received (1 Cor 15:3a). Like the Corinthians, Paul received the gospel. It was emphatically not a religion that he had invented or discovered on his own account.16 Indeed it was, as he on one occasion told the Galatians, given by “revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:12), and it was the gospel of a community that existed before he had any part in it—indeed, when he was still its enemy (Gal 1:13; cf. 1 Cor 15:9; Phil 3:6). The words with which Paul speaks of passing on this revelation are carefully chosen: delivered and received echo the language in which both Greek philosophical tradition and the rabbinic schools spoke of the faithful handing on of a true teaching.17 In speaking of the apostolic gospel at the beginning of his letter, Paul had emphasized the cross, whose folly and shame nonetheless show God’s wisdom and glory (1:21–23). Now, however, it is not the cross that is central to his discussion but rather the death to which the cross led and, indeed, death itself and death’s defeat. Some at Corinth (as we shall learn at 1 Corinthians 15:12), while claiming to be believers, are yet denying that defeat. Thereby, in Paul’s view, they are denying the entire apostolic gospel. So Paul reminds them what the gospel claims, appealing to an apostolic formula that is manifestly early, since Paul himself received it.18 Paul evidently believes that the Corinthians will recognize this formula as authoritative for them and even, in a sense, as defining who they are, for it summarizes what he had preached to them and what they had believed (15:1–3, 11).19 The apostolic formula does not speak only of the cross but rehearses in brief the entire story of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Those therefore who repeated that formula, in their liturgy and elsewhere, evidently had access to the entire story, at least in this summary form, performing it by the fact of narrating and hearing it and thereby, as with all performance, being formed by it. Hence, incidentally, the much debated question, “Was there a pre-Markan passion narrative?” is answered. Evidently, there was. It had taken form in the life, worship, and witness of the Christian community at least as early as the year 55, and here, in outline, it is. It may be granted that what we have here is not strictly a narrative. Equally, though, it must be granted that what we have here implies a narrative and is meaningless without one.20 It is evident, moreover, that, as Ulrich Luz has pointed out, Jesus’ resurrection is an integral part of that narrative: there never was a passion narrative that simply ended with Jesus’ death.21 The gospel that the Corinthians received was then, Paul says, introducing each phrase of the formula from which he quotes with an emphatically repeated “that” (hoti),22 that (hoti) “Christ23 died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,” and that (hoti) “he was buried,” and that (hoti) “he has been raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,” and that (hoti) “he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” (15:3b–5).

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At the heart of this proclamation are two statements in parallel—“Christ died” and “he has been raised.” The statements are parallel, yet not completely so. The first (“Christ died”) has a verb in the aorist tense, implying an action that is complete and in the past; the second (“he has been raised”) has a verb in the perfect tense, implying an action that is complete and in the past but also has implications for the present.24 The second verb is, moreover, in the passive voice—surely an example of what is sometimes called “divine passive,” that is, reverently implying the action of God.25 Each verb is, however, also qualified. Christ died “for our sins,” and he has been raised “on the third day.” The formulaic expression “for (huper) our sins” (literally, “on behalf of our sins”) is elliptical and conveys a dual sense: “on our behalf ” and “to deal with our sins.” Just how the death of Christ deals with our sins is not discussed; the formula simply asserts that it does.26 By the expression on the third day the formula appears to imply (1) a first day – the day of Christ’s death, which was “the day before the Sabbath” (Mark 15.42), (2) a second day – which was the Sabbath (Mark 16:1), and so (3) a “third day” – the day when the empty tomb was discovered, which was “first day of the week” (Mark 16.2).27 Each of these qualifiers is, however, itself qualified. Christ’s death “for our sins” and his resurrection “on the third day” are both, says the formula, according to the Scriptures. The defining story is linked to a much longer and older defining story. But which parts of the Scriptures? Paul would probably have answered “All the Scriptures!” since for him, clearly, the entire record of God’s dealing with the people of God points to the death and resurrection of Christ, “for,” as he pointed out to the Romans, “Christ is the end (telos—that is, ‘the purpose, the fulfillment, the proper conclusion’) of the Law, that every one who has faith may be justified” (Rom 10:4).28 Yet that does not mean that particular scriptural passages may not be in mind. With regard to he died for our sins commentators have generally, and I think correctly, pointed to the passage in the second part of Isaiah, where the prophet says of God’s servant: Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. (Isa 53:4–5)29

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With regard to upon the third day, scholars tend to point to Hosea 6:2: “After two days he will revive us; and on the third day he will raise us up, that we shall live before him.” In this connection I also find persuasive a suggestion made some years ago by the Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide, that those who were familiar with Israel’s Scriptures would have heard in the expression “on the third day” not simply a reference to a period of time, or even to a particular text, but rather to whole series of texts and traditions about “the third day,” all of them pointing to God’s mercy.30 Thus, it was on the third day that Abraham came with Isaac to the Mount of Moriah (Gen 22:4); on the third day Joseph began to take pity on his brethren (Gen 42:18); on the third day God appeared in glory upon Mount Sinai (Exod 19:16); on the third day Esther put on her royal robes for the deliverance of her people (Esth 5:1); after three days in the fish Jonah prayed and was delivered, for Nineveh’s sake as well as his own (Jonah 1:17); on the third day God commanded Ezra to lay up his vision in his heart and promised him redemption (2 Esd 13:57–14:9); and finally there is indeed Hosea 6:2, with regard to which one of the rabbis commented, “The Holy One, Blessed be His Name, never lets the just stay in affliction longer than three days” (Midrash Rabbah, Hos 6:2). In the light of all this it was perhaps not surprising that Christian proclamation should emphasize God’s raising Jesus on the third day. What we see in these references to the Scriptures is, we should bear in mind, the tip of an iceberg, a process of coming to terms with and affirming the sufferings, death, and exaltation of Christ in the light of Scripture that took place in reflection, liturgy, and proclamation throughout the first decades of Christianity and that manifests itself again and again in our texts, not only at 1 Corinthians 15 and in the canonical passion narratives but also elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g., 1 Cor 10–11; 1 Pet 2:22–25, and Heb 5, 6, 1331) and in extracanonical texts such as the Epistle of Barnabas.32 Last—but hardly of least importance—each of the two parallel statements in the confessional formula is paralleled with another element that Raymond Collins calls “the reality factor.”33 He was buried (etaphē) points to the reality of Christ’s death; he appeared (ōphthē) to Cephas, then to the twelve points to the reality of his having been raised. The two expressions taken together naturally imply that after Jesus had been raised, his body was no longer in the grave. They do not – the apostolic formula does not – necessarily imply all that is said of the empty tomb in the gospels (the women’s visit, the angelic messengers) although they do not exclude it: but they do imply an empty tomb tradition of some kind. In other words, we should infer from this formula that about which the gospels are explicit. Of course not all commentators will agree with what I have just written, and I am aware that in stating the matter so categorically I am being controversial.

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Nevertheless, however many times or however learnedly it may have been denied, the logic of the sequence “Christ died . . . he was buried” leading to “he has been raised . . . he appeared” still appears to me, on the basis of any plausible interpretation of the language, to imply that at the second stage the tomb is to be regarded as empty. (“My colleague went to her office. She sat at her desk and wrote. She went out. She was seen in the Blue Chair coffee shop.” Does the reader really need me to add that my colleague was now no longer at her desk?)34 As I am being thus controversial, I will make a further point. I am no longer impressed by an argument sometimes put forward, which runs like this: since Paul never refers to the empty tomb elsewhere in his extant writings, either he did not know of it or it was not important to him.35 Neither conclusion follows from the premise. Were it not for 1 Corinthians 11, we should have no way of knowing that Paul knew the Last Supper tradition. Yet he clearly did know it, and in a version that bears striking similarities to Luke’s. It was, moreover, important enough for him to refer to it when his argument needed it, as it did in 1 Corinthians 11. So with the tradition of the empty tomb, implicit in the apostolic formula: Paul did know it, and he referred to it when he needed to. And he needed to refer to it here. Why? Because it fitted with the way in which he was about to speak of the general resurrection of the dead. More precisely, the burialin-the-tomb and the being-raised-from-the-tomb that were the marks of Christ’s victory provided a measure of parallel (not, of course, an exact parallel) to the being-sown-in-weakness and being-raised-in-power that will, according to Paul, be the mark of our victory through Christ. That, then, will have been one reason why Paul here made use of the apostolic formula.36 The other reason, as he had already implied and would say plainly at 15:11, was its universality. Finally, we note that the apostolic statement of the work of salvation is completed by the identification of those to whom the Risen One appeared: he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve (15:5). The Risen One was recognized by those who had followed him. Given the culture and assumptions of the age, it is hardly surprising that in this summary, the appearances to the women have dropped out.37 (Indeed, it is perhaps more surprising that in the fuller telling of the story, they stayed in.) Cephas and the twelve are obviously (according to the thinking of that generation) suitable figures to represent the church as a whole—Cephas as spokesman and, according to Luke, recipient of the first appearance among the men (Luke 24:34; Acts 2:32; 3:15; 10:41–42; the notion is perhaps implicit in Mark 16:7), and the twelve as representing the new, or renewed, people of God. The apostolic formula probably ended here.38 The next word, thereupon (epeita), is characteristically Pauline.39 That, together with a change in

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grammatical construction, suggests to us that Paul has now finished quoting and is adding further witnesses on his own account: thereupon he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Thereupon he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me (15:6–8). Of an appearance to five hundred brothers and sisters we know nothing, save that Paul says it was so.40 This insertion of Paul’s does, however, by its reference to some who have fallen asleep, make clear that death is still a present reality even for witnesses of the risen Jesus. The final resurrection of all believers is still to come—which is, of course, precisely what Paul intends to argue.41 The appearance to James (presumably the Lord’s brother James) is also mentioned nowhere else in the New Testament, although there are traditions about it in the noncanonical literature.42 Evidently, Paul was in a position to know of it from James himself (Gal 1:19; 2:9–10), and, equally evidently, he supposes that the Corinthians know who James is. The appearance to all the apostles obviously refers to a group other than, and wider than, the twelve, and in Paul’s understanding will perhaps have included the appearances to the women.43 In any case, it conveniently leads to the last item in the series: last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. Paul’s words here have caused commentators considerable difficulty. In particular, debate centers on what he may have meant by the two expressions that my translation renders last of all and as to one untimely born. With regard to last of all (eschaton de pantōn), possible meanings include “the latest in time,”44 “last in the sense that it completes the series and there won’t be any more,”45 or “last in the sense of being least important.”46 Each has its advocates and each appears to be possible. It is also possible—indeed, I regard it as probable—that if pressed Paul would have acknowledged that all three meanings were implicit in what he said.47 Of course he knew that the resurrection appearances had ceased—that other members of the church, and even Paul himself after the Damascus road, did not receive the kind of revelation that he had received there, a revelation that in principle set him with the original apostles (cf. Gal 1:1, 15–17; 1 Cor 15:9–10). Of course he knew the simple chronological fact that his call in Christ, relative to the call of other apostles, was late. And surely that lateness worked for him as also a sign and symbol of his weakness and distance from God until his calling in Christ (cf. Phil 3:7–12). Even greater uncertainty surrounds the expression as to one untimely born (hōsperie tō ektrōmati). Ektrōma is normally used of a birth that violates the

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normal period of gestation, whether induced as an abortion, a natural premature birth, or a miscarriage.48 Paul’s use of the word here is surprising, and opinions differ as to what he meant by it. Raymond F. Collins suggests that it “highlights the reality of Paul’s having been chosen from birth as were the biblical prophets . . . as well as the fact that at the time of the Damascus Road experience he was ill-prepared for the role that was his.”49 Others have thought that he took the word from the lips of his adversaries—that it was an expression of scorn used with reference to the strangeness of his conversion or his personal appearance (compare 2 Cor 10:10).50 Perhaps he did. In any case, as Joseph Fitzmyer says, it speaks of “someone in the condition of death to whom grace has nonetheless been shown.”51 These expressions are, then, somewhat obscure to us. What is not obscure is Paul’s main intention. The risen Jesus, he says, appeared also to me. Here we may note three things. First, the shape of Paul’s expression overall—thereupon . . . thereupon . . . then . . . last of all (eschaton de pantōn)—makes it quite clear that he is speaking of a series. There is no indication that he wants us to regard the last item in that series as essentially different from the others. Second, he uses the same word ōphthē of the appearances to himself as he uses of the appearances to the others. “He regards it as the same in kind. He saw the risen Lord as they did.”52 Finally, the expression also to me (kamoi), coming at the end, probably does, as some commentators have suggested, indicate Paul’s “deep humility.”53 As such it fits well with what Paul is about to say: for I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God (15:9). But the expression to me also affirms yet again Paul’s claim that his experience is one with the experiences of the other apostles and of James. He saw the risen Lord just as they did. Moreover, unfit though he may be to be an apostle, nonetheless, by the grace of God I am what I am (15:10a)—for God’s call is not dependent upon human righteousness, but upon God’s grace (Rom 9–11!). And his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them— though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me (15:10b). Paul concludes his narrative by stating yet again that the content of the gospel that he preached—the substance of the formula that he quoted—was exactly the same as that of the other apostles: whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed (15:11; cf. Gal 1:18–2:9). The entire thing—the apostolic formula itself and Paul’s additions to itinvolves two elements that will, as we shall see, form consistent parts of all the early Christian testimonies to Christ’s death and resurrection. One is the appeal to antiquity, to Israel’s Scriptures. They are the story of God’s dealing with God’s people and they therefore provide the language, the concepts, the

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metaphors, and the precedents for God’s latest dealing with them. The other is the appeal to what is new, to the autoptai, the eyewitnesses. This thing was not done in a corner. Some among the Corinthians were certainly familiar with the teaching of Cephas (1 Cor 1:12). Evidently they knew who James was and were aware of other apostles (15:8), and it is hardly likely that none among them had ever heard any of them teach. In other words, the assertion of eyewitness testimony made both by Paul and by the apostolic formula was easily open to challenge unless, as must have been the case, he and the Corinthians knew perfectly well that it was correct.54 Naturally, the two elements do not serve the same purpose. The appeal to Scripture and antiquity is meant to tell us something of the significance of the apostolic testimony. The appeal to eyewitnesses is meant to tell us that the testimony is true.

3. Proposition (1 Cor 15:12) In the light of this “statement of the facts,” Paul now turns to the issue that he wishes to address (or the “proposition,” which in ancient rhetoric is the statement of the case to be argued). If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say, “There is no resurrection from the dead”? (15:12). Formally, the apostle is asking a question. Actually, since his question demands the response, “They cannot logically hold to any such position!” he is presenting the Corinthians with a thesis, which is that there is resurrection from the dead and that it has already begun since, as the apostolic proclamation says, Christ has been raised. In case there should be any doubt in the minds of his audience as to what that means, Paul at this point amplifies the apostolic formula. Christ has been raised, he says, from the dead (ek tōn nekrōn).55 The plural form of the dead (tōn nekrōn) indicates that it is not simply individuals, nor even the baptized, but the dead—that is, the dead as a whole, all the dead—into whose realm Christ has entered, and from whose midst he has been raised. Evidently this has implications for that realm as a whole, and this will be important later in Paul’s argument.

4. First Proof: There Really Is Resurrection from the Dead (15:13–34) Paul’s “proof” is structured according to the rhetorical pattern (often called by the Latin term inclusio) of three units of speech, in which the first and third are to some extent parallel so that the whole may be diagrammed as A, B, A’. UNIT A (15:13–19). Paul begins with a series of conditional sentences linked closely with the proclamation of the apostolic gospel to which he has just

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referred. The point he makes is that those claiming to be believers who deny resurrection of the dead are actually sawing off the branch on which they claim to sit, since to deny resurrection from the dead is in effect to deny the apostolic preaching and the Corinthians’ own faith. As regards the apostolic preaching, if there is no resurrection from the dead, then Christ has not been raised. Paul attacks the Corinthians’ assertion first with a reductio ad absurdum: if they are right in denying the possibility of resurrection, then of course Christ cannot have been raised. They cannot have it both ways.56 But if that is the case, if indeed Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. Indeed, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Paul himself is a false witness: we are even found to be misrepresenting God,57 because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised (15:13–16). As regards the Corinthians’ own faith, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished (15:17–18). Indeed, if that is the case, it seems hard to see what good reason anyone would have to continue to follow Christ at all. For if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (15:19). (15:20–28). In the central unit of the inclusio, as often with this rhetorical form, we find the assertion that is really central for the speaker, and in every sense. In contrast to the series of conditional sentences that he has just completed, Paul moves to an affirmation. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead. And that means that the realm of death itself is no longer what it was. What Israel hoped for, what perhaps a few pagans had conceived in their wildest dreams, in this case has actually happened. Death has been broken. Moreover, in being raised from the dead Christ stands not just as a lone victor, not just as God’s only favored son, but rather as the firstfruits (aparchē)58 of those who have fallen asleep (15:20). We should note, again, that Paul does not say “as the firstfruits of the baptized” or “as the firstfruits of believers” but of those who have fallen asleep—of those, in other words, who have suffered the universal human fate. Paul continues with a note of explanation: for, he says, as by a human being came death, so also by a human being has come the resurrection of the dead (15:21). Christ achieved what he achieved, and received what he received, by way of his humanity. By the fact of Christ’s humanity he is bound to the entire order of humanity, and so the entire order of humanity is bound to him, whether it knows it or not. Therefore, through his defeat of death, all humanity now stands in a different relationship to death, whether it knows it UNIT B

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or not: for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (15:22).59 Human life in Adam means life as we experience it, life subject to sin and death, the universal human experience. In that sense, therefore, Paul is speaking of an historical, even an empirical, reality, and that remains the case whatever one’s view of the actual historicity of Adam. In Christ means, however, that a new reality has appeared within the field of history. Therefore the historicity of Jesus Christ is important. That new reality has broken the power of sin and death and, thereby, within history offered a new and universal possibility, namely, that all shall be made alive.60 But each in his own group! (15:23a).61 In what follows, Paul uses a kind of language and symbolism that is familiar to us from numerous texts of apocalyptic and eschatological Judaism.62 Doubtless he inherited these things from his Pharisaic upbringing. But there is now a difference. What for Paul’s forebears were entirely future “last things” have now, in Paul’s view, already begun with the resurrection of Jesus Christ—Christ the first fruits (15:23b), as he puts it, repeating the language that he has just used a sentence or so earlier. For Paul, then, the first stage of the eschatological scenario has already happened, and as “firstfruits” it is sign and pledge of the rest of the harvest to come. What then? Then, at his coming—which is, of course, still in the future—those who belong to Christ (15:23c) will be raised.63 This is consistent with what Paul says elsewhere to the Thessalonians and to the Philippians. “The dead in Christ,” that is, those among the baptized “who have fallen asleep,” will be first to experience directly the glory of Christ’s victory (1 Thess 4:16–18; cf. Phil 3:20–21). This will be the second stage. Then comes the end,64 when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he—that is, God65—has “put all his enemies under his feet” (15:24–25; citing the first verse of the messianic Ps 110). This will be the third stage. The psalmist, no doubt, was thinking of political and military enemies; for Paul, however, the last enemy to be destroyed is death (15:26). It is important to be clear what Paul here says about death itself. Death is eschatos echthros, last enemy.66 Paul stands fully in line with the biblical view. Death is not our friend, nor is it an illusion. Dylan Thomas’ angry “Do not go gentle into that good night”67 is, from this point of view, rather more biblical than are the well-intentioned and often-requested (at funerals) words of Henry Scott Holland.68 Of course, death sometimes comes as a deliverance from pain or hardship, and all of us may hope to make a “good” death, as we may hope to endure faithfully and gracefully any evil that comes to us, but that does not make death in itself any kind of “good.” Robert W. Jenson states the issue precisely: “The New Testament’s dominant language for the End is indeed the

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language of the ‘kingdom of God.’ But death is ‘the last enemy to be destroyed,’ the last barrier to God’s rule, so that death’s destruction and the achieving of God’s final reign are the same.”69 And that, of course, is Paul’s point, namely, that death is the last enemy and that it is to be destroyed. Then at last the promise of Psalm 8, which speaks of humankind as originally appointed by God, as vice-regent of creation, will be fulfilled through Christ: for “God has put all things in subjection under his feet” (15:27, citing Ps 8:6). Again Paul’s expressions are elliptical, but perhaps this text appealed to him because its reference to the subjection of “all things” (panta) to Christ implied a hope not merely for humanity, but for the entire created order. “For the creation (ktisis)70 waits with eager longing,” he wrote to the Romans on another occasion, “for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God; for the creation was subjected to futility (not of its own will but because of the one who subjected it) in hope—because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:19–21). But when it says, “All things are put in subjection under him,” it is plain that he is excepted who put “all things . . . under him.” When “all things” are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put “all things . . . under him,” that God may be everything to every one (15:27b–28). Of course, this is not the language of Nicaea. It would take another three hundred years for that. Yet the point that Paul is making is precisely the point that would eventually be made at Nicaea by means of the expression homoousion (“of one substance”), namely, that the subjection of all things to the Son involves not two rival divine principles but the sovereignty of the one God who truly acts in the Son and is truly glorified in the Son. It is true that if what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:27–28 were the only comment by him that we had on Jesus’ relationship to the Father, it might lead us to attribute to him a subordinationist Christology. But manifestly it is not the only comment we have. It stands alongside his repeated assertion that “the Lord Jesus Christ” together with “God the Father” is the source of “grace and peace”71—an extraordinary assertion for a Pharisaic Jew. Perhaps even more strikingly, it stands alongside passages such as that in the Philippians hymn72 wherein, as we noted earlier, Paul reminds his hearers that God has given to Christ Jesus “the Name that is above every name,” and we also noted that for a Pharisaic Jew, there was only one name that could possibly be described in that way, and it was the name of God (Phil 2:9).73 UNIT A ’ (15:29–34). In his third and final unit, Paul returns to the theme of his first unit, again affirming that to deny resurrection from the dead is to deny the apostolic faith. This time, however, he focuses on particular practices and aspects of that faith. If, for example, there is no resurrection from the dead,

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what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? (15:29). Here is a historical puzzle. Paul’s general point is, of course, clear enough: what is the point of doing anything “on behalf of the dead” if the dead are without hope? But the precise practice to which Paul is referring, who did it, and even whether Paul approves of it—all these things remain a mystery.74 Then Paul turns to his own life and ministry. Why, he asks, am I in peril every hour? I protest, brethren, by my pride in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (15:30–32). Here again, while Paul’s general argument is clear, what precisely he means by having “fought with the beasts at Ephesus” remains in doubt. Personally, I see no reason to understand the expression as anything but figurative.75 Paul is simply using the agōn (“struggle,” “contest”) motif, which is by no means an uncommon feature of Hellenistic moral discourse—and, indeed, is by no means without parallel even in this letter (see 1 Cor 9:24–27). That does not mean that the hardships Paul had endured were not severe, merely that they did not actually involve gladiatorial combat. In conclusion (and as is appropriate to the inclusio as a whole), Paul introduces a variation from Unit A in that Unit A’ ends by moving from discourse that is epideictic (demonstrative) to that which is deliberative (urging a choice of action). Don’t be misled!76 “Bad company ruins good morals.”77 Sober up,78 as you ought, and sin no more! For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame (15:33–34). This shift is, however, by no means incidental, nor is it a change made merely for form’s sake. Moreover, the type of deliberative argument that Paul uses is striking. He does not say, “Do this, because it is the only thing that fits the facts, and because it will therefore work” (the argument from expediency) but “Do this, because it is the right thing to do, because the alternative ruins good morals” (the moral argument). For Paul, evidently, the decision to hope for the resurrection of the dead, and the affirmation of the body and the material order that lies behind that decision, are not merely matters for philosophical debate. They involve a directly ethical choice. This is an issue to which we shall return.79

5. Second Proof: How the Dead May Be Raised, and the Nature of the Resurrection Body (15:35–49) In a fashion that is typical of philosophical or ethical diatribē,80 Paul now pictures an imaginary objector to what has been so far said. But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” (15:35). The

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question is understandable, and perhaps was precisely the question that was raised by “spiritually” minded Hellenes at Corinth. Paul’s response, like the question, is in the vigorous style of the diatribē and is, indeed, exactly what we would expect from that genre: You fool! (15:36a). Paul goes on to offer first an illustration from agriculture, wherein living plants, in all their growth and vigor, come from what appears to be a mere nothing. As for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body (15:37–38). The variety to be seen in these differing kinds of plant life then leads Paul to a second illustration, which is that the universe at large contains vast variety—different kinds and ways of being, each with its own identity and glory. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory (15:39–41). What then? So it is with the resurrection of the dead (15:42a). As with seed and plant, resurrection involves something wonderful and vigorous that springs from what appears to be nothing: it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power (en dunamei). It is sown a body bound to the life of the world as we know it (sōma psuchikon), it is raised a body filled with the Spirit of God (sōma pneumatikon81) (15:42b–44a). Paul insists that the resurrection body will still be “body” (sōma) but distinguishes sharply between body bound to the life of the world as we know it (sōma psuchikon) and the resurrection body filled with the Spirit of God (sōma pneumatikon). In this way, as Jon D. Levenson points out, Paul illustrates the Jewish teaching that resurrection “would yield a transformed and perfected form of bodily existence and thus a state of being both like and unlike any we can know in the flesh.”82 And now Paul’s second illustration—the vast variety of ways and kinds of being that the universe already contains—has surely prepared us, at least a little, for this final truth: that if there is a body bound to the life of the world as we know it (sōma psuchikon), there is also one filled with the Spirit of God (pneumatikon) (15:44b). Paul here uses ideas and language inherited from his Jewish and Pharisaic tradition, and certainly he is speaking of the general resurrection rather than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yet equally clearly he envisages a profound unity between the two. Indeed, that unity is the nub of his argument. Christ’s resurrection was, as Paul has already said, “the firstfruits”—the sign, pledge,

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and guarantee of the harvest to come. Christ, too, “was buried” in weakness but now “has been raised”—raised moreover, as Paul puts it on another occasion, “in power” [en dunamei] (Rom 1:4)83—precisely the expression that he has just used (15.43) in connection with the general resurrection. Now we see why the “was buried” and “has been raised” of the apostolic formula are so important to Paul: together, they are the pledge of what is to come. But we also now see better what those expressions mean for him. They mean that Christ already has this “transformed and perfected form of bodily existence.” And Paul knows that, for he has seen it (9:1, 15:8).84 So Paul continues, Thus it is written that the first “human being”—Adam—“became a living being in the world (eis psuchēn zōsan)” (15:45a). Paul quotes from the Septuagint version of Gen 2:7, and what is evidently crucial for him is the text’s use of the word psuchē, which I have translated as “a being in the world” in order to bring out its connection, obvious in Greek, with the adjective “psuchikos” (“bound to the world as we know it”). The point is that for Paul the creation story itself points to this “living being” as caught up by its very nature with a kind of life that is weak and vulnerable.85 What then? For all the terrible loss that had been incurred with Adam’s disobedience, there were within Judaism traditions clearly expressing hope for a restoration of Adam’s glory (e.g. 1QS [Community Rule] 4.22–23; CD [Damascus Document] 3.20; Life of Adam and Eve [Vita] 47.3; [Ap] 39:1–3).86 For Paul, convinced that God has vindicated Jesus through his resurrection, this hope has evolved into the conviction that Jesus Christ is the last Adam in whom that very thing has happened. Evidently there is a correspondence between the first and the last Adam, and 1 Corinthians 15 is not the only place where Paul speaks of it (see, for example, the elaborate comparison at Romans 5:12–21). Always, however, the correspondence is as much, or more, marked by contrast as by similarity. So it is here. In contrast to the first Adam, who merely became a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit (15:45b–c)87—and certainly it is Paul’s view, and his experience, that Christ through his resurrection has become a source of life for all who believe (Rom 5:17; 8:1–11; 2 Cor 4:8–10; compare Eph 2:1–7, Col 2:13). But it is not that which is filled with the Spirit of God (pneumatikon) which is first, but that which is bound to the life of the world as we know it (psuchikon), and then that which is filled with the Spirit of God (pneumatikon). The first human being from the earth, a thing of dust! The second human being from heaven!88 (15:46–47). The first humanity, the humanity of Adam, the humanity of our natural weakness, is tied to the earth from whence it was taken (and is therefore called psuchikon); the second humanity, the humanity of the resurrected Jesus Christ, is eternal and marked for heaven (and is therefore called

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pneumatikon).89 But the good news is this: that there is now an indissoluble relationship between the first Adam and the second, a relationship that is already evident in the baptized, who have already received the spirit of adoption and in whom “the Spirit already bears witness that they are heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Rom 8:16–17a). In other words, the first humanity is destined to become as the second or, as Paul now continues, as was the human being of dust, so are those who are of dust; and as is the heavenly human being, so are those who are heavenly. And just as we have borne the image of the human being who is of dust, so also we shall90 bear the image of the heavenly (15:48–49). As Paul put it to the Philippians, the Lord Jesus Christ will at his coming “transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself” (Phil 3:21; compare 1 Thess 4:14).

6. Epilogue and Peroration (15.50–58) So Paul moves to his epilogue and peroration: a rhetorical restatement of his argument together with an exhortation to right judgment and consequent action. I tell you this, brethren: “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption” (15:50). Here, if my suggestion as to Paul’s opponents is correct, he may have been indulging in a little tweaking of their tails—for this, of course, would be precisely what they said in opposing the Jewish notion of resurrection.91 Paul’s point, however, is that they have not understood what that resurrection is. Lo! I tell you a mystery (15:51a). “Mystery,” in the religious language of Paul’s time, is virtually a technical term. It invariably means something like “a divine secret, which was hidden, but has now been revealed to the initiate.”92 What then is the “mystery” here? The “mystery” is, as Seyoon Kim says, “God’s plan of salvation embodied in Christ for both the Jews and the Gentiles”93 We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (15:51b–52). Paul here returns to the language of Jewish apocalyptic,94 and it is interesting to note that he still seems to envisage the possibility that some among his readers will be alive at the parousia of Christ. That, however, is clearly not his central concern: he merely uses this picture in order to arrive at the point that he really wishes to make. Yes, the Corinthians are right, “corruption cannot inherit incorruption”—but that does not mean that the body does not belong to God or that God does not have a purpose and destiny for it. For this corruption must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (15:53). God is faithful, and God does not abolish even that

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which is weak; God redeems it. Therefore, as Paul pointed out to the Corinthians on another occasion, “we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling—if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked. For indeed while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be further clothed, in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee” (2 Cor 5:1–5).95 So now Paul continues, When this corruption puts on incorruption, and this mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory” (15:54a). Paul is alluding to Isaiah. He refers, in particular, to an extraordinary passage in which the prophet not only speaks of God’s ultimate defeat of death but also declares that God’s victory will not just be for the sake of Israel but for all, so that here, as Martin Buber put it, Israel’s comfort “rises to the comfort of humanity”:96 “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth; for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, ‘Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation’” (Isa. 25:6–9).97 Paul continues with a second prophetic allusion, this time to Hosea— “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (15:55; cf. Hos 13:14b), but in Paul’s usage Hosea’s words now veil an irony. For what the prophet saw as a word of judgment and doom against Israel, calling on death and the grave to do their worst to a sinful people, Paul now hears as a song of mockery against death itself, which has done its worst and yet has been defeated by God’s resurrection of Jesus Christ. So neither death nor sin will have the last word!98 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law: but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (15:56–57). As various critics have pointed out, this last sentence seems to interrupt the train of thought and might even be a gloss, whether by Paul himself or a disciple.99 Such a conclusion is not necessary, and arguably, as Hans Conzelmann suggests, the very harshness of the statement “is significant. Paul is absolutely determined to express this thought.”100 Be that as it may, the relationship between sin, Law, and death is for Paul something established. It is expounded at

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length in the Letter to the Romans (3:9–20; 5:12–20; 7:7–25). Briefly (very briefly) it is that death finds its means of entry into the world through sin, and sin gains its hold upon us because of the weakness of our mortal nature, which is actually provoked to sin by the very knowledge of sin that the Law brings.101 It is, moreover, precisely because there is this deep relationship between sin and death, both of which are facts of our present life, that the defeat of death is relevant to our present life. Which brings Paul to his final point, wherein again he moves to deliberative rhetoric but this time, strikingly, to an argument from expediency—which is to say, he implies not only that what he exhorts is the right thing to do but also that it is the only thing, in the long run that will work. For what is finally at stake here is Jewish monotheism: the God of Israel, who is a jealous God, will allow no domain to be excluded from the divine sovereignty, and that includes the domain of death. God creates no trash, and regards nothing as disposable. Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your toil is not in vain (15:58). If it were not for the resurrection, their labors might indeed be fruitless, but nothing that is done for the Lord and in the light of the resurrection can finally be wasted. Here there is promise, certainly, but also implicitly a warning. What Paul urges on the Corinthians means a deeper devotion to service grounded in a greater willingness to accept the hope offered to them. Or, to put the matter more simply, what he is saying is, “Let there be less speculation, and more work.”102

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5 Mark

“Faith,” Saint Paul said, “comes from what is heard” (Rom 10:17). Certainly that is where many among the first Christian believers began. They listened to those like Paul who proclaimed the good news of Jesus Christ (1 Cor 2:1–5; Gal 3:1–5; 4:13–14), and they listened to their letters, which were read aloud in the Christian assembly (Col 4:16), perhaps when the community of believers gathered to share the Eucharist. According to Paul (1 Cor 15:1–12), that proclamation followed a basic pattern on which all were more or less agreed—a claim that could, as we have noticed, have been easily enough challenged if it were not true. Then, round about 70, a Christian whom we call Mark (there is no particular reason to reject the traditional association of him with John Mark of Acts, although that association cannot be demonstrated1) seems to have decided that he could bring together enough material about the Lord Jesus—his sayings, his deeds, his life, his death, and his resurrection—to write an account of him. So Mark went on to produce what we now know as the Gospel according to Saint Mark. Mark and his contemporaries would probably have called what he wrote a “life” (Greek, bios; Latin, vita), a genre that was at the time very popular. Unlike modern “biography,” which particularly since the nineteenth century has tended to focus much on the inner life of its subjects, delving into their thoughts and motivations, Greco-Roman “lives” generally focused on what their subjects said and did, leaving the audience to work out motivation

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for themselves. This is exactly what Mark does. He tells us quite a lot about what Jesus said and did; he hardly ever tells us what Jesus thought.2

The Purpose of the Written Gospel Like all who wrote before the invention of printing, Mark naturally assumed that most people who experienced his work would do so by hearing it. Written words were still regarded as largely a preparation and resource for spoken. To be able to read aloud from a text, and to do it well, was a highly valued skill. Nor was it easy to acquire, since manuscripts of the period were unpunctuated and did not even have spaces between the words. Reading a lengthy piece on a public occasion would require careful preparation on the part of the reader. Mark’s work shows various signs of being written for public reading.3 For example, its author takes evident pleasure in “bracketing” various episodes, a stylistic motif that is widely recognized by literary critics as characteristic of oral structuring. Two parts of the story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter bracket the story of the woman with the issue of blood (5:21–24, 35–43); two parts of the story of the cursing of the fig tree bracket the cleansing of the temple (11:12–14, 20–24); and two parts of the story of Peter’s denial bracket Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin (14:53–54, 66–72). Again, its author makes striking use of irony, particularly at Jesus’ trial and crucifixion—another characteristic of oral structuring. There is irony in the paradox with which the priests mock Jesus, “He saved others, himself he cannot save” (15:31). There is irony in the titulum nailed to his cross, “The King of the Jews,” (15:26), which Pilate also intends as mockery. In both cases we, the audience, know that what is being said in jest is actually the truth. Just where might Mark have expected his book to be read? According to Luke, there was a celebration of the Eucharist in Troas at which Paul talked for so long that a young man called Eutychus fell asleep, dropped several stories out of the window where he was sitting, and when first taken up was thought to be dead. As soon as it was clear that he was uninjured, the group celebrated the Eucharist together, and Paul even then continued talking until dawn! (Acts 20:7–11) A little over a century later, Justin Martyr describes the Christian Eucharist, now become rather more formalized, and observes that as part of it “memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets” were read “for as long as time permits” (Apology 1.67). It is into this evolving context of liturgy, cult, and proclamation that we should surely place the first readings of Mark’s Life of Jesus. It would have taken about seventy minutes to read aloud without a break, although there are at least two points (see “The Structure of the Gospel” below)

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where a short break might appropriately have been taken. In any case, by the standards we have been observing, seventy minutes would have represented a quite modest claim upon the community’s time. What would such a performance have been like? We have no direct descriptions—doubtless because everyone interested already knew what they were like. But we do possess more or less contemporary advice about narrating in public in the Greco-Roman world generally—about speaking in character, about the use of gesture, and about the effects of a well turned sententia (“maxim”) or a good dramatic rendering on an attentive audience. We find such material, for example, in Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria 1.11). We also have descriptions of synagogue worship, which clearly involved reactions and participation by the hearers; so, for example, in the Gospels (Luke 4:16–22). Philo of Alexandria in his account of the Therapeutae describes how even they, committed to silence, nonetheless “applauded silently” in such a situation. All this taken together suggests that early performances of Mark’s gospel would have been (and would have been intended to be) deeply dramatic, emotional affairs, in some respects not unlike nineteenth- or twentieth-century preaching in an African American church or certain chapels in Wales. They would have been marked, that is, by highly dramatic (in our sense, “theatrical”) use of voice and gesture on the part of the performer, and by intense and voluble reaction and participation on the part of the audience—by applause, groans, and cries such as “sophōs!” (as we might say, “Right on!”) and whatever were the Greco-Roman equivalents of “Amen!” “Alleluia!” and “Preach it!” As with any effective dramatic performance, the tension between past and present would to a considerable extent be collapsed. The audience would feel themselves to be at once hearing what had happened and yet experiencing it and living in it now. They would hear how Jesus addressed their predecessors, and they would hear Jesus addressing them. Sometimes they would hear both at once, and sometimes one rather than the other. One has only to read through a passage such as the description of the conversation at Caesarea Philippi (8:27–9:1) to see how well it was designed for such audience participation: inviting joy and affirmation of Peter’s confession, groans and grief at Jesus’ terrible rebuke to him, mounting identification as the hearers recognized the sufferings of their own community honored and blessed in each of the sententiae addressed to “the crowd,” and utter joy at the concluding promise of the vision of God’s kingdom. Perhaps the expression of that joy lasted for several minutes, before the narrator invited them to silence with a gesture and then went on with the story, “And after six days . . .” (9:2). In all this, doubtless Mark hoped that (unlike brother Paul) he would be able to keep even the Eutychuses of the assembly awake. Certainly he intended

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by his composition to give both pleasure and instruction to his hearers. Since they valued his work enough both to preserve it and, in the case of Matthew and Luke, later on to revise and rework it, it seems likely that he succeeded. The narrative that Mark presented to his hearers was in outline simple, but not therefore either loose or carelessly constructed. It fell into three quite clearly defined parts (almost, we might say, “acts”), together with what, for want of better words, I will call a “prologue” and an “epilogue”—although my reader should understand that by these terms I do not mean “optional supplements” or “addenda to the main narrative.” By “prologue” I mean “prospectus, in the light of which the following narrative is to be read,” and by “epilogue” I mean “conclusion and concluding narrative, providing the key by which the preceding narrative, including even the prologue, is finally to be interpreted.”4 The Prologue (1:1–8) told of a messenger who announced the Coming One, in accordance with prophecy. “Act I” (1:9–8:21) told how Jesus did mighty works and taught with authority in and around Galilee. “Act II” (8:22–11:52) told of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem with his disciples, during which he repeatedly spoke to them of his coming death and resurrection, and they repeatedly failed to understand. “Act III” told of Jesus’ ministry in Jerusalem (12:1–16:8), beginning with his messianic entry, his prophetic act in the temple, and his teaching (12:1–44), continuing with his farewell discourse to his disciples on the Mount of Olives (13:1–37), and concluding with the story of his passion—his last supper with his disciples, his arrest, his trial, his crucifixion, and his death (14:1–15:47). The Epilogue (16:1–8) told of a messenger who announced the Crucified and Risen One, whom his disciples were to see, just as he had promised.

Mark’s Account of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus (15:37–16:8) The parts of Mark’s structure that especially interest us in examining him as a witness to Jesus’ death and resurrection are the last section of the fourth part (“Act III”) (15:37–47), which tells of the death of Christ and his burial, and the epilogue (16:1–8), which speaks of Christ’s resurrection. Four features of this narrative immediately strike us. First is that Mark has been directly preparing us for it from Caesarea Philippi onwards. Three times Jesus has directly spoken of his coming death and resurrection—each time with the dei, “it must be, it is necessary,” which makes it clear that this is the divine will (8:31; 9:31; 10:33). Jesus has, moreover,

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interpreted his coming death: on the road, where he told his disciples that it was to be “a ransom for many” (10:45), and at the Last Supper, where he told them that it would be according to the Scriptures, for “the Son of man goes, even as it is written of him” (14:21), and that it was to be his “blood of the covenant, which is shed for many” (14:24). The second striking feature of this narrative—and especially striking when we turn to it straight from 1 Corinthians 15—is this, namely, that it follows the pattern of the apostolic proclamation as Paul there presented it. Mark’s narrative affirms the substance of each of the four elements of the apostolic formula attested by Paul, that Christ died, that he was buried, that he has been raised, and that he appeared. Confirmation of this is provided by the fact that all the literary evidence in Mark suggests that the Passion Narrative and the Empty Tomb Narrative essentially belong together. There is no evidence that there was ever a passion narrative that did not conclude with resurrection.5 Quite the opposite! In other words, Mark’s passion and resurrection are simply examples of a much fuller telling (which does not necessarily mean therefore an evolution or development6) of the story of which 1 Corinthians 15:2–5 is a summary. Thereby they provide us with a rather striking illustration of Paul’s claim that the death and resurrection of Christ were preached by “all” according to this pattern. As perhaps the most obvious way of showing this, in what follows I will consider Mark’s narrative under the four headings that Paul’s apostolic formula provides, into which framework it comfortably fits. Third—Mark affirms these four elements, as does Paul, by two appeals: by appeal, on the one hand, to antiquity, that is, to Israel’s Scriptures, in order to affirm the significance of what is being said; and, on the other, by appeal to what is new, that is, to the eyewitnesses, to affirm its truth. With regard to the appeal to Scripture, in place of the formula’s laconic “according to the Scriptures,” Mark’s narrative offers us a wealth of scriptural allusion both in his passion and in his empty tomb narratives. The fact that Israel’s Scriptures function in this way by providing the language and patterns for narrating Jesus’ passion and resurrection is, of course, an implicit assertion that the events depicted are to be seen as according with the biblical story. With regard to the appeal to eyewitnesses, we shall see that Mark retains (at least implicitly) what the apostolic formula contained concerning the witness of Peter and the Twelve, but goes beyond that to include the women’s witness not only to the Risen Christ but also to each of the four elements in the proclamation. At each key point of the narrative Mark will emphasize the presence of known and identified autoptai (eyewitnesses). Perhaps they are not always (and particularly in the case of the women) the eyewitnesses that Mark himself or the first-century church as a whole would have chosen, but they are

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eyewitnesses, nonetheless, and each of the key elements in the story—cross, entombment, empty tomb, and the Risen One himself—were seen by them. Mark’s insistence on this is, as I shall try to indicate in my discussion, the obvious reason for his otherwise “strange”7 repetition of the women’s names. Fourth, we shall see that Mark has no doubt whatever that Jesus’ tomb is empty, and that his resurrection, whatever else it may be, is physical, an event affecting space and time. The “whatever else” is, however, significant. The physicality is transformed. No evangelist, as we shall see, is more sensitive than Mark to the mysterium tremendum with which we, and he, are presented at the empty tomb, and none more clearly conscious than he that (as at earlier points in his narrative—the calming of the storm, and Jesus’ walking on the water) he is speaking of events that he does not pretend fully to understand. Mark is, indeed, particularly effective in his use of narrative to convey to us something that is no doubt implicit in the apostolic formula but that the medium of narrative enables him to make explicit, namely, an awareness of the awe that accompanies our encounter with the resurrection of the dead. It is one of the most striking and, in my view, self-authenticating elements of Mark’s account of the women that in the end of his narrative their silence, their flight, and their numinous awe are one. Once made aware of this, we may well ask, how could it be otherwise? For confronted with the resurrection of the dead, we are confronted with the true end of all that we know—not an end like death that is within what we know (alas, all too well) but an end beyond what we know, overwhelming and transfiguring it. If we are not struck dumb by that prospect, if we are not overwhelmed with divine dread, if we do not, like Peter, cry out “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinner!” or, like the women, flee in silence, if we find that we can continue to act as if all were “business as usual,” then it seems likely that, as so often with the glories that surround us, we are able to treat them casually only because either we have not seen them or else we have not understood what we have seen. But we anticipate. Let us begin at Mark 15:37, where the evangelist affirms in his narrative the first of the four elements of the apostolic formula:

that Christ died Jesus uttered a loud cry (apheis phōnēn megalēn),8 and expired (exepneusen) (15:37). Exepneusen means literally “breathed out” and, like its English equivalents “expire” and “give up the ghost,” is frequently used to mean “died.” Here, therefore, it is equivalent to the expression “Christ died” in the apostolic formula quoted by Paul. Mark’s account of Jesus’ death is brief, brutal, and uncompromising. Mark presents us with a savior who cannot save himself, a messiah

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who is strung up, a king who dies the death of a slave, a son of God whom God abandons. All this is surely a joke, just as whoever scribbled the Alexamenos graffito9 saw. Then, and only then, does God act. Just as the heavens were rent asunder (schizomenous) at Jesus’ baptism, leading to the divine confession that he was God’s beloved son, so now the curtain of the temple10 was torn (eschisthē) in two, from top to bottom (15:38).11 Views of the significance of the tearing of the temple veil have varied, from the negative (that it points to the departure of God’s presence from the Temple and its coming destruction) to the positive (that it points to the opening of God’s presence now to the world). Either or both may have been intended.12 Neither is spelled out by Mark. But it was in any case generally understood in the ancient world that the deaths of the great were accompanied by signs and prodigies,13 and possibly this is all that Mark meant to imply. At Jesus’ baptism the sign of the heavens being rent asunder had been accompanied by a voice that declared him son of God. So now, when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus (houtōs14) expired, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (15:39). Throughout his narrative, Mark has made it clear that unless one will accept Christ crucified, one has not truly accepted Christ, and again and again that has been a stumbling block for the disciples (8:31–38; 9:31–32; 10:32–45). Even the mocking priests have offered to “see and believe” if only Jesus will “come down from the cross” (15:32). Certainly the full confession of Jesus will be confession of him crucified and risen (8:31; 9:31; 10:34), and in that sense the centurion’s confession is still incomplete. Nevertheless, it moves closer to true understanding of Jesus than any previous confession in the gospel, and surely Mark does not intend us to miss that.15 Nor are we to miss the situational irony in that this confession comes from Jesus’ executioner. What precisely the centurion—assuming he were historical— might have meant by the phrase the Son of God16 or even what Mark thought he might have meant (it will hardly have been the faith of Nicaea) is, again, beside the point.17 Mark sees someone who is Jesus’ executioner, a representative and servant of pagan empire,18 who yet, on some level of insight or understanding, is moved by the sight of Christ’s death to glorify God in him. Throughout biblical tradition, whenever such revelatory insight is granted to one outside the people of God, it invariably implies a particular word for God’s people. Sometimes this is a warning of ways not to be taken, sometimes a boundary to be crossed, sometimes a new promise and hope to be embraced. Here, surely, we are to understand that the boundary to be crossed is the barrier between Jew and Gentile, already hinted at by Mark at earlier points in his narrative (7:24–8:2119).

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At the conclusion of his account of Christ’s death, Mark introduces—from the viewpoint of literary style not very gracefully, as various commentators have noticed—an element that is not to be found in the apostolic formula.20 There were, Mark says, also women looking on from afar,21 among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome, who, when he was in Galilee, were following him, and ministering to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. (15:40–41). The appearance of women followers of Jesus at this point in the narrative, and only at this point, becomes even more striking when we note Mark’s (again, rather awkwardly expressed) admission that these same women, never previously mentioned by him, have nonetheless been present all the time. In Galilee they were following (ēkolouthoun) Jesus and ministering (diēkonoun) to him. Without getting into complexities as to whom Mark does and does not call “disciple” (mathētēs) (he does not apply the word to the women), there can be no doubt that akoloutheō is Mark’s normal word for what a disciple does (1:18; 2:14, 15; 6:1; 8:34; 9:38; 10:21, 28, 32, 52), so evidently we are to understand that these women are, at the very least, among Jesus’ serious adherents. As regards their ministering to him, while, as Donahue and Harrington point out, Mark probably meant to refer to “what constituted ‘women’s work’ in first-century Mediterranean society,”22 still we should note that in speaking of that work the evangelist uses the verb diakoneō, a word that, as John N. Collins has shown us, generally carries a sense of royal or priestly service, whatever may be the actual task.23 Aside from angels (1:13), no one in Mark’s gospel “ministers” (diakoneō) except the Son of Man and women, and no one ministers to the Son of Man except women (1:31; 15:41).24 I find it hard to believe that we are not here intended to see a degree of contrast, advantageous to the women, with the behavior of the male disciples.25 Indeed, Mark’s way of proceeding seems to illustrate rather well a characteristic of patriarchal narrative to which Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has drawn attention, namely, that in such narratives the presence of women will as a rule be mentioned only when their behavior can no longer be taken for granted, as when it “presents a problem or when women are exceptional individuals.”26 Mark mentions the women at 15:40–41 after ignoring them throughout his narrative precisely because at this point they are “exceptional individuals.” They are acting as do a number of women in antiquity who are praised for their virtue, which is to say, they are acting honorably where the men have acted dishonorably.27 At the moment of Jesus’ dying, unlike the men disciples, the women are present and keeping watch. Later they will seek to see that he is honored properly in the tomb.

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Such, then, are the women who have come up with Jesus to Jerusalem. Who are they? We scarcely know. Mary Magdalene appears elsewhere in the New Testament and in Christian tradition (Matt 28:1–10; Luke 8:2; 24:10–11; John 20:1–18), but Salome is mentioned nowhere else, and unless Mary the mother of James and Joses is to be identified with Mary the mother of Jesus—an identification that I regard as extremely unlikely28—she, too, is mentioned nowhere else in our literature. One thing, however, is clear: and it leads us to the real reason why the women’s presence is important to Mark. We scarcely know who these women were, but it is evident from the manner in which Mark refers to them that he believes his audience does know, just as they clearly know who Alexander and Rufus are (15:21). These are real people who exist outside of his text in the world of his hearers.29 In contrast to Alexander and Rufus, however, who play no part in the narrative other than being related to one of its participants, Mark identifies the women as eyewitnesses, a role whose significance, in view of the understandings and assumptions of ancient historiography, we have already noted.30 The women appear in this role, in fact, at each of three vital points and by implication at a fourth. At the point we are considering, they witness the death of Jesus (15:40–41); shortly afterward they will witness his burial (15:47); on the Sunday morning they will witness that the tomb is empty because he has risen (16:1–8); and finally they will be informed that they, with the disciples and Peter, will at a point subsequent to Mark’s narrative see him (16:7). In other words, these named and known women witness each of the four claims made by the apostolic formula: that Jesus died, that he was buried, that he rose, and that he appeared. That the women’s witness to the fourth claim (he appeared) is less spelled out than the others is to be expected, since it was less necessary: in that case it supported and was supported by the testimony of others, including that of Peter and the Twelve. This role as known witnesses is, I believe, the reason for Mark’s insertion of the women’s names as well as for his emphatic repetition of them—a feature that, from a literary point of view, Morna D. Hooker understandably finds “strange.”31 Mark, however, wishes to make unambiguously clear that the events of cross, burial, and resurrection, though not witnessed by the men, were all witnessed by identifiable and identified women. Indeed, it is quite possible that Richard Bauckham is correct in suggesting that the variations in the women’s names at different points in the narrative, far from being “grounds for not taking them seriously as naming eyewitnesses of the events” are actually evidence of “scrupulous care.” “Mark names three women at the cross and the same three women as those who go to the tomb, but only two of the three are said to observe the burial of Jesus. The explanation must be that in the

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known testimony of these three women the two Marys were known to be witnesses of the burial but Salome was not.”32 This certainly seems to be a more convincing explanation of what Mark has done than, for example, the desperate suggestion of one commentator that Salome was omitted at 15:47 “for the sake of brevity”!33

And that he was buried And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation (paraskuē), that is, the day before the Sabbath (thus Mark clearly establishes his view that the crucifixion took place on a Friday34) Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council (boulētēs), who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus (15:42-43). Mark’s characterization of Joseph as boulētēs identifies him as a member of the Sanhedrin that had condemned Jesus to death. Unlike the other evangelists, Mark gives no indication that Joseph was a disciple of Jesus (contrast Matt 27:57; John 19:38) or even that he had demurred from Jesus’ condemnation (contrast Luke 23:51). Indeed, Mark’s claim that the Sanhedrin’s verdict was unanimous (14:64) would rather lead us to suppose that Joseph had acquiesced in it. If so, then Mark’s account also shows some generosity of spirit in nonetheless characterizing him as one who was looking for the kingdom of God—presumably because (like Tobit) he took it upon himself to observe the commandment, even in the case of a man condemned as a felon by a Jewish court (Deut 21:22–23).35 Since Jesus had, from the Roman viewpoint, finally been executed for maestas (treason),36 no doubt to request his body from the Roman authority did take some courage; on the other hand, Joseph, as member of the council that had condemned Jesus, was evidently more likely than a follower of Jesus to meet with success in such a request. And Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead (15:44). Depending on the strength and health of the victim, death by crucifixion could take a day or so; six hours was an unusually short period.37 And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body (ptōma38) to Joseph (15:45). Mark’s account of Pilate’s response accords with normal Roman imperial practice in Judea, which was, in times of peace, to respect Jewish custom in matters of burial as in other matters. Pilate would also, perhaps, have considered that by such an act in connection with a defeated rebel he was manifesting clementia (“clemency, leniency”)—one mark, as a Roman might have seen it, of Roman imperium at its best.39

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And he bought a linen shroud (sindona), and taking him down, wrapped (eneilēsen40) him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb (15:46). Joseph’s actions, as Mark describes them, involve the absolute minimum of ceremony. He does what is required; no less, but certainly no more. From the Sanhedrin’s viewpoint this is probably a burial “in shame” such as, again, would be normal in the case of a felon condemned by a Jewish court. A burial in shame omitted precisely what was important in an honorable burial, namely, interment in a family tomb and mourning.41 Both are conspicuously absent from Mark’s account of the burial of Jesus.42 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid (15:47). Two of Mark’s three eyewitnesses affirm, however, the second element of the apostolic proclamation and so, by implication, rule out in advance any suggestion that they did not know where the body was laid or might have gone to the wrong grave. What Mark does not suggest is any cooperation between the women and Joseph. The women merely watch, which would be strange if, as the later evangelists imply, Joseph were a disciple of or at least sympathetic to Jesus.43 Nor, incidentally, does Mark suggest that the women have any hope that Jesus will rise—other, we may assume, than their normal Jewish hope for his part in the general resurrection.

And that he has been raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures And when the Sabbath was past—in other words, on Sunday morning, the third day after the crucifixion—Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him (16:1). It is striking that even here Mark mentions no intention on the women’s part to mourn, merely an intention to anoint the body (m. Shabb. 23:5).44 Of course we understand that the women are grieving—else why do they act at all?—but they seem also to act in accordance with Jewish custom, which decreed that in the case of those condemned as felons by a Jewish court, those close to him “did not observe mourning”—that is, they did not observe the seven days of mourning, nor did they rend their garments45—“but they might grieve, for grieving is in the heart” (m. Sanh. 6:6).46 For the third, and clearly the most important, time, Mark names his witnesses. This, after all, is the strangest part of his narrative and the hardest to believe, so there must be no mistake. And very early on the first day of the week—Mark seems as anxious to be clear about identifying the resurrection on the third day as he is about identifying the known witnesses—they went to the tomb when the sun had risen

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(16:2). Perhaps, as Francis J. Moloney suggests, we are to hear a hint of something more here than a mere marker of time. The darkness that overwhelmed the world at the time of Jesus’ death (15:33) has been broken.47 “Dawn,” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “is the time of Christians.” And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” (16:3). No doubt the women’s setting out to anoint Jesus’ corpse when they had no idea how they were going to get at it is somewhat illogical, as commentators have not hesitated to point out.48 Yet if there were any reminiscence behind Mark’s story, we would surely need to admit that Mary of Magdala and her companions will hardly have been the first or last people in the history of the world to have been moved by strong emotion to attempt something without knowing how they were going to do it, or even without noticing until the last minute an obvious difficulty.49 And looking up, they saw (anablepsasthai theōrousin) (16:4a). The expression is solemn. As Moloney says, “this is no ordinary seeing.”50 The women are about to witness an act of God: they saw that the stone was rolled back, for it was very large (16:4b). The women’s difficulty disappears. The passive voice of the verb (was rolled back) is evidently a divine passive: “God . . . has overcome the darkness and has opened the seemingly impossible” (Moloney).51 For perhaps the first time in this part of the narrative, we experience a glimmer of hope. And entering (eiselthousai eis52) the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were utterly amazed. And he said to them, “Do not be amazed!” (16:5–6a). Mark narrates this scene in exactly the style with which he has narrated the passion; he is brief, even laconic, with, however, a wealth of scriptural allusion in the background. We are surely to understand that the young man is an angel, as is indicated both by his sitting on the right side (which is the seat of authority), his white robe, the women’s being utterly amazed (exethambēthēsan), and the young man’s word of comfort. These features, in various combinations, are normal in accounts of angelic visitations and divine revelation in the Scriptures and related literature, and the young man and his revelation are, of course, so understood by both Matthew and Luke (Matt 28:2–5; Luke 24:4–5).53 In particular, the women being utterly amazed, as were the crowd who saw Jesus when he came down from the Mount of Transfiguration [9:15]), is a sure sign of that religious awe in the presence of the numinous that Rudolf Otto taught us to call the mysterium tremendum.54 An early (probably seventh century) commentator’s comment and his citation of 1 Corinthians 2:9 are apt: “This is because eye has not seen, nor ear has heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.”55

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Following his word of comfort and encouragement, the young man addresses the women with a message that implies, first, supernatural knowledge, for he knows why they have come, and second, that they have come to the correct tomb, for he points to Jesus’ resting place. Most explicitly and most importantly, however, he declares Jesus’ resurrection: “you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised, he is not here; see the place where they laid him” (16:6b). The New Testament characteristically refers to Jesus’ resurrection as God’s action, and doubtless Mark’s passive he has been raised (ēgerthē) should also be understood as implying that.56 In any case, what is certainly implied is that Jesus’ resurrection and the empty tomb (the correct empty tomb) go together. The moment was beautifully portrayed by Fra Angelico (see fig. 2); even as the angel addresses the women, and as Mary Magdalene peers curiously into the empty sepulcher, already the scene breathes resurrection (spirat resurrectionem) and already the Risen Christ is with them, though as yet unseen.

And that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve “But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before to Galilee. There you will see him, as he told you” (16:7). The young man continues by giving the women an instruction: they are to remind Jesus’ disciples of his prediction at the Last Supper, “But after I am raised, I will go before you into Galilee” (Mark 14:28).57 The angel promises them that Peter and the other disciples will see the Risen One, who is also the very teacher whom they have followed, Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified (16:6). Here the women’s witness, though probably to be inferred, is not central. It will not be so important as in the earlier parts of the narrative, since it is to be joined by the witness of Peter and the Twelve, which the apostolic kerygma had affirmed from the beginning. The link between the angel’s promise and Jesus’ words at the Last Supper has, however, another implication. As Mark presents them, Jesus’ words at Mark 14:28 are not speculation or suggestion, nor are they even examples of prophetic insight, involving the usual prophetic qualification “if you be willing and obedient” or “unless you repent.” Jesus’ words are predictions (“I will go before you into Galilee”), more or less in line with the “must” (dei) of the passion predictions (8:31; 9:31; and 10:33) and the warning to Peter (14:30). What then? In Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ predictions always come to pass. We need therefore to be clear. The angel is here giving the women an instruction. But he is surely also telling them what must happen, and through them he is telling the disciples.58 And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them (16:8a). Mark’s account of the women’s reaction

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follows naturally from what we have been told already of their being utterly amazed by their encounter with the angel, and is in the same vein. Trembling (tromos) is a word that does not occur elsewhere in Mark, but in Paul’s letters is associated with proper religious awe (2 Cor 7:15; Phil 2:12). Astonishment (ekstasis) is, according to Mark, the emotion experienced by those present when Jesus raised a girl from death and appears to be regarded by the evangelist as a normal response to such a manifestation of divine power (Mark 5:42). Both these expressions of emotion at 16:8 are plainly linked to the divine revelation that the women see and hear at the tomb. In other words, just as in his Prologue (1:1–13) Mark told us how John the Baptist was clothed, not because he was really interested in what the Baptist looked like, but to remind us of Elijah, and thereby to make us realize who the Coming One is,59 so now in his Epilogue he tells us of the women’s reactions, not really because he wishes us to focus on their feelings, but because he wishes us to realize how utterly overwhelming is the revelation of Jesus Crucified and Risen. Mark continues, and they said nothing to any one, for they were filled with awe (ephobounto gar) (16:8b). Mark’s intention at this point is disputed perhaps as fiercely as any matter of interpretation in all Scripture. Some commentators see in the narrative a sinister plan to demote Peter and the Twelve. The point being made (we are told) is that the women did not deliver their message, therefore the disciples did not go to Galilee, did not meet the risen Jesus, and were not recommissioned, all of which meant that the JewishChristian community in Jerusalem was inferior to the Pauline churches with their acceptance of Jewish and Gentile converts on an equal basis.60 Others construe the women’s behavior simply as disobedience; they fear arrest by the authorities, or they fear that they may be thought liars, or mad. Hence they finally fail Jesus, just as the men do, and this tells us that “as Christian disciples continue to fail and flee in fear” so “God’s action in and through the risen Jesus overcomes all such failure.”61 Although I have quite a lot of sympathy with the second of these views (who, as a Christian, could not?), still neither of them appears to me plausible as a description of what the evangelist may actually have meant. The “sinister plan” theory, apart from anything else, involves us in overlooking one rather obvious fact: as we have noted, the angel’s statement about the Risen One’s appearances to Peter and the Twelve refers to Jesus’ own prediction at the Last Supper (14:28), and in Mark’s narrative Jesus’ predictions always come true. Therefore the recommissioning of the disciples about which the angel speaks is, according to Mark, not merely a possibility but a certainty.62 Peter’s and the other disciples’ following Jesus to Galilee will happen—and, of course, by the time Mark writes, already has happened. Therefore interpretations

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of the narrative that depend on a theory that the angel’s prediction was not fulfilled must be ruled out as implausible. As regards the “women’s failure” theory, we have already observed that from Mark’s first mention of the women, he presents them as witnesses known to his audience, and he also presents them in rather striking contrast to Peter and the disciples. In this particular part of the narrative he has listed them for a third time, so that there will be no mistake as to who they were and what they saw. If, however, Mark actually means us to understand that in the event the women failed to witness, then, presumably, we are expected within a few lines of narrative to have forgotten all that we have just been told of them as witnesses—and, indeed, Mark would appear to have been wasting his time and ours in telling it. All of which seems unlikely as a description of authorial purpose. So then, rather than imposing upon Mark’s narrative such theories as these, let us try instead to listen to the story as he tells it. Having left the tomb, the women said nothing to anyone (oudeni ouden, a Greek double negative). What does Mark mean by this? I find it helpful to compare two passages from elsewhere in his narrative. One is the story of the leper whom Jesus heals (1:40–45). Jesus gives him an explicit instruction, “Say nothing to anyone” (mēdeni mēden, another Greek double negative), “but go your way, show yourself to the priests, and offer for your cleansing the things which Moses commanded, for a testimony to them” (1:44). In this case Mark’s understanding of “say nothing to anyone” is clearly not exclusive of communication with anybody at all but rather implies a preparation for, or concentration on, communication with the right people—in this case, “the priests.” The healed leper, however, immediately disobeys Jesus’ instruction by going out and proclaiming freely what has happened to him (1:45). In other words, the true opposite of the silence that Jesus has enjoined is not talking to the priests, as he was bidden, but general public announcement, such as he actually made. There is no reason to understand Mark’s similar expressions at 16:8 in a different way, and every reason, in view of his implicit presentation of the women as witnesses, to understand them in the same way.63 The women did not rush out and immediately start chattering to everyone, thereby disobeying the angel’s command that they go to the disciples with their news: rather, they fled the angel’s presence in silence, greeting no one by the way, for they were filled with awe by both message and messenger. Secondly, we may compare the women’s silence as they leave the tomb with Peter’s reaction to divine revelation at the Transfiguration (9:2–8). Peter indeed speaks, but inappropriately (9:5). As Mark notes (not without a touch of humor) “he did not know what to say”—but still could not resist saying it (9:6).

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In other words, in this case we discover that in Mark’s view, willingness to speak too quickly may simply show that the speaker has not understood what has been revealed. What then of the motive for the women’s silence and flight at 16:8? It was, Mark says, because they were filled with awe (ephobounto). In view of the fact that he has already three times told us of the women’s reaction in terms that make it clear that they were overwhelmed with religious fear in the face of a divine revelation, it is surely unlikely that at this point, suddenly and without warning, we are expected to understand that we are now hearing about a merely mundane fear.64 Certainly Mark has given us no reason to suppose that he intends such a shift, and in terms of what might be regarded as feasible narrative, I question whether his account so far of the women’s religious dread even allows room for it. That is why I translate ephobounto (RSV and NRSV: “they were afraid”) as they were filled with awe.65 My choice is, incidentally, how both RSV and NRSV choose to translate Mark’s far more emphatic use of phobeō and its cognate phobos at Mark 4:41, where Mark’s ephobēsan phobon megan becomes “they were filled with awe [NRSV: ‘great awe’].” (One wonders, was it entirely irrelevant to this choice of a more dignified rendering that at that point the subjects of the verb were male disciples?) I accept that to some extent texts mean different things to different interpreters. Every good actor or actress knows that he or she must act “in the moment,” and that a text may change its sense not only with different performers but even from night to night with different audiences. But every good actor or actress also knows that faithfulness to the author demands that one not simply interpret or perform against the text. An interpretation that is proper must be at least plausible. The suggestion that by Mark’s final reference to “fear” he meant to speak of mundane fear or anxiety appears to me, in the light of his whole narrative, and particularly in the light of the account he gives in 16:1–8, simply implausible. I cannot see how in performance (and let us not forget that Mark is a text that was intended for what we would call “performance”) it could be conveyed. Moreover, if it were conveyed, it would mean that at the last moment attention was directed away from the mystery of the resurrection to the feelings of the women, which is, surely, the last thing that Mark will have intended.66 Of course there is something in us that would like more. We may easily understand the motives that led the other evangelists and those who composed Mark’s additional endings (that is, 16:9–20 and the so-called “shorter ending”) to tell us something of the women’s witness and of their and the disciples’ experiences of the Risen One. Talk of such additions as a “betrayal” of Mark is surely inappropriate.67 Nonetheless, those who made such changes were in danger of obscuring something very important in what Mark had said,

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and we should be grateful that Mark’s unembroidered ending has survived. Mark’s narrative construction is careful and tight, and his end precisely matches his beginning. In his Prologue he concentrated all on the message in the wilderness about the Coming One. In his Epilogue he quite deliberately does not speak of the women’s witness (even though earlier he has drawn our attention to it), nor does he describe Jesus’ appearances (although he clearly promises them). Rather, he concentrates all on the numinous and terrifying glory of one single fact, which if heard and understood and believed must be the end of everything that we thought we knew, and the beginning of a knowledge that is quite new. The women came to the tomb in grief for the dead, but Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified . . . has been raised. Cranfield is surely correct: “It is not surprising that the women were afraid and were rendered speechless for a while. Mark’s account (more emphatically than any of the others) underlines the mystery and awe-fulness of the Resurrection and warns against all attempts to sentimentalize or domesticate or reduce to the measures of our mental capacity or emotional convenience the decisive intervention of God.”68 More recently Marie Noonan Sabin has also, I think, seen the point of 16:8: “The women, bid to preach, do not babble like the leper”— nor, we might add, like Peter at the Transfiguration—“but are stunned into speechlessness—a silence that is not less but more than words.”69 Or, as the author of the ca. seventh century Exposition of the Gospel put it, “They said nothing to anyone, because they alone see the mystery of the resurrection who themselves have deserved to see it.”70 Analogously with the women’s silence as they leave the tomb, we may imagine the charged silence that will have followed the gospel’s original reading to believers in the Roman Christian assembly. Such a reading, and the believers’ silence, will have been apt preparation for their encounter with the Crucified and Risen One, present with them in the Mass that doubtless followed, and still more apt for the mystery and challenge of following Him as He went ahead of them into the world, to which they, too, like the women at the tomb, must then return.

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6 Matthew

The Gospel according to Saint Matthew is a revision of Mark. It follows Mark’s overall narrative outline, supplements Mark’s account with additional material of its own, and at times modifies Mark in the light, presumably, of its author’s convictions. As with Mark, those who first read or listened to Mathew will have thought of it as a “life,” and in some ways, indeed, it conforms rather better to the normal characteristics of that genre than does Mark, notably, in its provision of stories about Jesus’ birth and origins. Matthew is longer and less tightly constructed than Mark, and strikingly alternates between narrative and lengthy passages of discourse. More precisely, it contains five major discourses on rather clearly defined topics,1 and these, while slowing down the narrative, do at the same time make Matthew rather easier to use than Mark as a teaching tool, which is no doubt why they were included. Unlike Mark, Matthew could hardly have been read to its audience at a single sitting, but that is true of many ancient “lives,” such as Philo’s Life of Moses. Granted these near certainties, virtually everything else about Matthew is debated—including such major questions as its authorship, place and date of origin, and overall purpose. With regard to authorship, throughout what follows, I refer to the author as “Matthew” for convenience, but do not thereby intend to imply any particular conclusion about the question. For what it is worth, it seems to me overall that the gospel is likely to be the work of

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a single author rather than a “school” (as has sometimes been suggested2), but that does not mean that such an author will not have discussed things he cared about with those who were congenial to him or that he cannot have been part of a group that might, indeed, have regarded itself as a “school of interpretation” (beit ha’midrash). To most commentators, it does not seem likely that an eyewitness to the ministry of Jesus would have used Mark as the author of our gospel evidently has, but if Matthew’s group or “school” traced its history to some initial contact with the disciple of that name, that might account for the gospel’s being regarded as “according to” him—a fact of its history that has to be accounted for somehow.3 With regard to the place and date of origin, at present I find most persuasive the hypothesis that places the gospel’s writing in Syria4 at some time round about 80, late enough for Mark’s gospel to have penetrated to the churches in that region but close enough to the events of 70 for memories and traditions of that catastrophe still to rankle (23:32–39). Matthew belonged, I believe, to a Torah-obedient, Jewish-Christian community with links originally to “the holy city,” that is, Jerusalem. It had experienced the events of the Jewish war as God’s judgment on God’s people for their failure to receive the Messiah (10:14–15; 11:16–24; 21:40–46; 22:7) and had fled from Jerusalem to avoid the destruction of the city (cf. Eusebius, HE 3.5.3). Having done that, its members were then, one can imagine, faced with a problem. What were they supposed to do now? In largely Gentile Syria, should they remain aloof? Or should they join with the indigenous Hellenistic churches in proclaiming Jesus to the Gentiles? According to Matthew, the answer was “Yes” to the latter suggestion, and that is what his gospel advocates. Just as Jesus, following the Pharisees and scribes’ enmity toward him (15:1–20), withdrew into Gentile territory and there allowed himself to be moved by the faith of the “Canaanite”5 woman (15:21–24; cf. also 8:5–13), so the Matthean community, rejected and cut off by Israel, is to find fresh fields of mission and hope among the Gentiles (28:19–20). But this was, for Matthew’s community, a new venture, and the gospel indicates this by contrasting the last command of the risen Jesus to make disciples of “all the nations” with his earlier command not to go the Gentiles (10:5–13). Between those two points Matthew tells a story in which Jesus is in deepening conflict with the holy people (11:16–24; 12:1–45; 13:53–58; 15:1–20; 16:1–4; 21:23–46; 23:1–39) and gradually withdraws to his disciples (10:16–42; 11:25–30; 12:48–50; 13:10–17; 16:5–17:13; 18:1–35; 19:23–30), culminating in the Passion Narrative, wherein the people choose to follow leaders who deceive them by handing over their Messiah to be killed by the Gentiles (26:3–5; 27:1–2, 20–25) and who then refuse to tell even the truth that they know about the resurrection (28:11–14), so that the holy people finally become “the Jews” (28:15).6

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In this connection, commentators have often noted that Matthew’s gospel is marked by an intense hostility toward particular Jewish groups—notably the Pharisees. What we are seeing here—for example, in chapter 23—is the furious hostility of a family quarrel.7 No doubt, as Ulrich Luz suggests, it “reflects the conflict and the schism of a non-Pharisaic Jewish community with a majority Judaism strongly influenced by the Pharisees.”8 Each group was offering its own way of preserving and handing on the Jewish tradition; each was concerned with piety in ordinary life; each was concerned with the whole people of Israel. Inevitably, therefore, they were rivals.9 Both sides were, and considered themselves to be, Jewish, and in polemic both sides no doubt gave as good as they got. It should not need to be said, but alas perhaps does need to be said, that however justifiable, or even unjustifiable,10 we may consider their behavior and words toward each other to have been in their situation, there is certainly no need, and indeed it is quite improper, for those of us who are not members of the Jewish family and have not had any part in that quarrel, to adapt their mutual hostility for our own purposes or in any way to maintain it. So then, Matthew believed that his community should now proclaim Christ to the Gentiles. But what did that mean in practice? Did it mean what Paul thought it meant—that Gentiles should be baptized on the basis of their confession of Jesus Christ, without the necessity of circumcision? Or did it mean what Paul’s opponents in Galatia and Antioch thought it meant: that Gentile converts to Christ must also be circumcised according to the Law of Moses? Given the confrontation between Peter and Paul described in Paul’s letter to the Galatians (Gal 2:11–14), whose side would Matthew have taken? Serious commentators can be found making plausible cases for both possibilities. So, for example, in David Catchpole’s view: Matthew’s attitude to any flexibility in the demand for circumcision may be guessed when . . . his Jesus thunders forth, “Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” Circumcision was far from ‘one of the least’ of the Mosaic commandments. So we can hardly doubt that on circumcision the Matthean Jesus, and therefore Matthew, adopts a conservative ‘no surrender’ attitude in the best Paisleyite style: to liberalism, woolly or otherwise, he will not give the time of day.11 Perhaps! Yet Catchpole’s very choice of expression (“Matthew’s attitude . . . may be guessed”) points to the problem, which is that despite all that is said about the law in Matthew 5:17–20, we do still have to “guess” the attitude of “Matthew’s Jesus” to circumcision. It is nowhere actually stated. Is that not strange, if

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Matthew took the view that Catchpole ascribes to him? To use Catchpole’s own analogy, during the period of Ireland’s troubles one would not have needed to listen to the Reverend Ian Paisley’s rhetoric for very long before identifying the issues regarding which for him there was “no surrender.” So why is Matthew’s Jesus so coy about stating his views?12—so coy, in fact, that he has left himself open to being taken by serious and learned commentators to mean exactly the opposite of what Catchpole claims he means. So, for example, in the opinion of W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, what Matthew is saying is that the law was still to be observed by Jewish Christians (5.17–20, 23.3) but such was not necessary for the Gentiles. (Despite the opportunity presented by texts such as 28.16–20, the circumcision of Gentiles is never mentioned, a circumstance that can only be explained if Matthew saw no need for it.) It would therefore be no problem for the evangelist to affirm the perpetuity of Torah and yet embrace the mission to the uncircumcision. Perhaps he thought that the law required of the Gentiles only fulfillment of the Noachic commandments.13 Clearly, Davies and Allison’s view is not simply preposterous, and their point that there is no mention of circumcision at 28:16–20—precisely where one would expect such a mention if that were the issue for Matthew—is a strong one.14 So where does that leave us? Certainly the existence of these very different possibilities for understanding Matthew’s text hardly leaves us confident that we know what he thought. It does, however, leave us confident of something else, namely, that on this matter Matthew’s narrative simply is not, and was not, clear—as, indeed, most commentators concede, implicitly if not explicitly. But why would that be? I find it hard to imagine that a presumably reasonably well-informed and interested Jewish Christian living in Syria in the 80s was not aware of the issue surrounding circumcision or its importance or that such a person could have been ignorant of the Pauline mission. As a writer, Matthew appears in general terms to be both competent and straightforward. Surely then he cannot have created this ambiguity merely by oversight or by accident. But if not by oversight or accident, then why? Why is the evangelist so unclear on this question? My suspicion is that he is unclear because he chose to be. Why? Because when faced with the division within his community, Matthew, the Torahobedient Jew, though he had a shrewd idea in which direction things were going and should go, was yet not quite able to answer the question “Do we abandon circumcision for Gentile converts?” with a clear and explicit Pauline

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“Yes!” Equally, however, he found himself unable to answer with a confident, Torah-obedient “No!” Faced then with his dilemma, what did he do? He told the story of Jesus. In telling that story, however, he made two points that certainly had a bearing on proper attitudes to the circumcision question, and no doubt to a good many other questions, too. First, he showed that the community of Jesus was to be a community of forgiveness and reconciliation; otherwise, it was neither Jesus’ community nor God’s (5:21–27; 38–48; 6:12–15; 18:15–35). Second, he reminded his audience that Jesus was present wherever any gathered in his name, and that he was properly to be worshipped just as God was to be worshipped because “all authority” was his (1:23; 18:2015; 28:9, 17). That granted, it remained for his hearers to draw their own conclusions about circumcision. If they took seriously what the gospel told them, especially at 28:19–20, very likely they, and he, could in the end come to only one conclusion, and that conclusion would be for Paul rather than against him. But Matthew did not spell that out. He left it implicit. As his master might have said, “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear!” By leaving this element of ambiguity, this need for decision by his readers, Matthew produced an ecumenical gospel, that is, a gospel that could be used by Torah-obedient Jews and that could also take its place in the great church of the Gentile mission. By the same token, he also offered a way for Torah-obedient Jews to take their place in that church, a way that neither made nonsense of their obedience to the traditions of their fathers and mothers in Israel nor obliged them to characterize others’ acceptance of uncircumcised Gentiles into the people of God as necessarily unfaithful to those traditions. That, I suspect, was a major part of the reason why Matthew determined to rewrite Mark.

Matthew’s Account of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus (Matthew 27:50–28:8) In preparing us for his account of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Matthew has followed exactly the pattern laid down by Mark, which evidently he found both meaningful and satisfactory. Three times Jesus foretells the passion and resurrection (16:21 par. Mark 8:31; 17:22–23 par. Mark 9:31; and 20:18–19 par. Mark 10:32–33), and on the road and at the Last Supper he interprets it (20:28 par. Mark 10:45; 26:24 par. Mark 14:21; 26:28 par. Mark 14:24), in all of which the only significant alteration is that Matthew unpacks the statement that Jesus’ blood is “poured out for many” with the explanatory gloss “for the forgiveness of sins” (26:28; cf. Mark 12:24).

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As we shall see in what follows, Matthew’s account of Jesus’ death and burial and the opening part of his account of Jesus’ resurrection follow Mark overall, although the Passion Narrative contains additional material about signs accompanying Jesus’ death (27:45–66). But then, instead of ending where Mark ends, with the empty tomb, Matthew adds an appearance to the women (27:9–11a) and an entire subplot about the priests and the guards at the tomb (27:62–65, 28:11–15). This subplot provides, in narrative and theological terms, a kind of counterpoint to the main story. The gospel then concludes with an account of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples, of which the climax is the so-called “mission charge” or “mission mandate” (28:16–20). Throughout this account Matthew maintains fully both the physicality of the resurrection experience and the transformation involved in it—the mysterium tremendum. Thus, not only is the tomb physically empty, but when the Risen One meets the women they immediately recognize him (the only appearance narrative in the gospels where there is no initial doubt or hesitation) and embrace him. On the other hand, they also—apparently without impropriety—“worship” him, and he subsequently appears to the eleven as the One having divine authority, who will be present with his disciples eternally. In my commentary on this material, I will assume the reader’s familiarity with commentary I have already offered on Mark, and will concentrate on Matthew’s special emphases and additions. For the sake of my analysis, as with Mark, I shall consider Matthew’s narrative under the four headings of the apostolic formula, into which structure, as does Mark, it comfortably fits.16

That Christ Died Then Jesus, having cried again (kraxas) with a loud voice (27:50a). In contrast to Mark, it is clear that Matthew envisages Jesus repeating his cry from the cross—the cry of which the evangelist has already told us in 27:46, that is, the opening of Psalm 22, the lament of the righteous sufferer.17 In substituting kraxas (cried) for Mark’s apheis, Matthew points directly to the psalm, for that “cry” is one of the most prominent expressions in it: “My God, I have cried (kekraxomai) by day to you” (LXX Ps 21:3 [MT Ps 22:3]; also 6, 25). According to the writer to the Hebrews, Jesus “offered prayers and supplications with a loud cry (meta kraugēs ischuras) and with tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence” (5:7).18 He was heard, no doubt. But, says Matthew, fully in the spirit of the psalmist, he was not answered—at least not yet: he yielded up his spirit (literally, “let go the spirit”: aphēken to pneuma) (27:50b). Matthew’s Greek is a little more elegant than Mark’s, and his choice of verb serves to remind us of the voluntary nature of

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Jesus’ death (cf. 26:53!),19 but essentially he does nothing whatever to blunt Mark’s harsh statement of the fact. Jesus died, just like everyone else. His cries were, the writer to the Hebrews says, a mark of solidarity with his people (Heb 5:1–10). And in that solidarity he died. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised (27:51–52). Just as in Mark, it is only now that we see that God has been present throughout. Matthew adds to Mark’s rending of the temple veil two further signs.20 First the shaking of the earth, which was, as the psalmist had described it, one mark of the presence of the God of Sinai (Ps 68:8). Second the raising of the saints—for resurrection is always a work of God, as the rabbis pointed out (Shemoneh Esreh: also Ps 68:20).21 The commentators are usually—and understandably—here reminded of Ezekiel 37:1–14. There, as here, there is resurrection of the dead, although the parallels do not go much beyond that. But perhaps also the evangelist is still thinking of Psalm 22: All who sleep in the earth Will bow before God; All who have gone down into the dust will kneel in homage. (Ps 22:30) Thus Matthew in his own way says what Paul says in his: Christ’s death is his entry into the realm of death, and hence his resurrection will mean that death is defeated, not merely for the sake of Christ but for his saints. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many (27:53). By thus speaking of Christ’s resurrection in the same breath, so to speak, as that in which he speaks of Christ’s death, Matthew surely loses some of the dramatic power of Mark’s straightforward narrative. But he does add an important theological dimension. Christ’s own resurrection, followed immediately by the resurrection of some among his saints, will make visible the eschatological truth of which Paul spoke: “Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming they that are his” (1 Cor 15:23).22 All this we should note—the earthquake and the opening of tombs—is the language of apocalyptic, the language with which Israel customarily speaks of God’s final judgment and vindication. And certainly Matthew’s choice of this language is deliberate. We are to understand that, in speaking at all of the death of the Son of God, we are already speaking of God’s final judgment and vindication. Only the significance of that judgment remains to be seen—and, in Matthew’s view, will be seen at the final advent (parousia) of the Son of Man

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(16:27; 24:29–31). Yet in Christ’s death and resurrection even that (as Jesus promised, 16:28) is already visible for some—for those with eyes to see: now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with great awe and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (27:54). For Matthew, then, unlike Mark,23 it is something more than the manner of Christ’s death that leads the centurion (and, according to Matthew, also his fellow soldiers) to acknowledge Christ. By saying that the soldiers also saw what took place, Matthew seems to imply that they saw not only the rending of the temple veil and the earthquake but also what took place when the risen saints were seen in Jerusalem after Christ’s resurrection, in which case, Matthew has delayed their confession for several days, and in so doing, has again lost Mark’s dramatic vigor (not to mention his narrative coherence). But again, he has deepened the theological significance of the story, since the soldiers’ confession is now, implicitly, not merely a confession of Christ crucified but a confession of Christ crucified and risen—the confession of the church. Why does Matthew have the centurion joined by the soldiers so that they become, in effect, a chorus? Perhaps he does so for no more reason than that. Perhaps because they in some sense balance the company of soldiers who, as we shall see shortly, will lie for cash about the resurrection (28:11–15). But most of all, I think, these foreign soldiers praise God because Psalm 22 is still in the evangelist’s thoughts:24 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the LORD: And all the families of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the LORD’s: And he is the ruler over the nations. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, And all the families of the nations shall bow before him . . . They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn The saving deeds that he has done. (Ps 22:27–29, 30)25 In what more fitting way, then, could Matthew’s narrative of the death of Christ have ended? Many women were also there, looking on from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him (27:55). This sudden mention of the women has been described as “somewhat anticlimactic”26—and so, in a sense, it is. It is there for the same reason as it is in Mark. Matthew wishes to name the witnesses, and some in particular: among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the

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sons of Zebedee (27:56).27 There is one change. In Mark, the third woman was “Salome.” Was Salome in fact the mother of James and Joseph, and did Matthew or his source know that? Or is Matthew speaking of someone else? We do not know. We do know, however, that Matthew’s change has produced a fine piece of situational irony. As the mother of the sons of Zebedee looks upon Christ crucified between two thieves, she now sees exactly what she was asking for when (according to Matthew though not Mark) she asked of Jesus places of honor for her sons, one on his right hand and one on his left (20:22).

And that he was buried WHEN IT WAS EVENING , THERE CAME A RICH MAN FROM ARIMATHEA , NAMED JOSEPH , WHO WAS ALSO A DISCIPLE OF JESUS (27:57). It is certainly possible that Joseph afterward became a disciple, and that would account not only for Matthew’s characterization of him but also for the recollection of his name in the tradition. But it is also possible that Matthew’s suggestion is merely, as John Dominic Crossan has suggested, “damage control.”28 He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone (lithon megan) to the door of the tomb and went away (27:58–60). Matthew omits all Mark’s detail about Pilate’s hesitation, and gives us a narrative that is terse in the extreme. He was no doubt quite as aware as Mark that formal mourning was forbidden for one condemned as a felon by a Jewish court and so, despite the clean cloth (perhaps suggested simply by Mark’s statement that Joseph bought it [Mark 15:46]) and Joseph’s own new tomb, the description of Jesus’ interment remains essentially the description of what was probably a “burial in shame,” as in Mark. As in Mark, the women watchers are present keeping their vigil, and again, no doubt, the reason is the same: they are witnesses. We are to understand that there can be no doubt about the tomb. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb (27:61). At this point, however, Matthew introduces material that is unique to this gospel: his subplot about the priests and their guard (27:62–66, 28:2–4, 28:11–15).29 This subplot forms in itself a complete, self-contained story and, as Matthew has arranged things, will run as an ironic counterpoint to the main narrative. THE NEXT DAY , THAT IS , AFTER THE DAY OF PREPARATION , THE CHIEF PRIESTS AND THE PHARISEES GATHERED BEFORE PILATE (27:62). It is of a piece with Matthew’s general hostility toward the Pharisees that he alone of the synoptic evangelists

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connects them with the passion and death of Christ. The combination of Sadducean priests and Pharisees going together before Pilate (on the Sabbath!) is in itself surprising and unlikely,30 as Matthew surely knew.31 In which case, the unlikely combination forms a part of his irony.32 They said, “Sir (kurie), we remember what that deceiver (planos) said while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise again.’” (27:63). A further element in Matthew’s irony is that these priests and teachers who will not accept Jesus as “Lord” (kurios) will now, in pursuit of their purpose, address the pagan Pilate by that very title—kurie!33 That Jesus was called “deceiver” in anti-Christian polemic is certainly true (see, e.g., b. Sanh. 43a, 107b).34 But here is more irony, for it will shortly transpire that those who use the word “deceiver” of Jesus will not hesitate to indulge in deception themselves. Already, unwittingly, they have reminded themselves (and us) of Jesus’ predictions (16:21; 17:23; 20:19) and so prepared us for what will come.35 “Therefore, they say, command that the tomb be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead’, and the last deception would be worse than the first” (27:64). Here is further irony—for in Matthew’s view they are the ones who, by denying the resurrection when it is revealed to them, will create a “worse” deception than any that went before. Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you are able” (27:65). Matthew’s Greek is ambiguous—taken in isolation it could be understood to mean either, “You have your own guard (i.e., the temple police), so you go and see to it!” or “You (may) have a (Roman) guard. Go and see to it!” Since, however, at 28:14 it will appear that the soldiers are responsible to Pilate, we assume that Matthew intends us to understand that the guards will be Roman as, incidentally, they certainly are in the Gospel of Peter’s version of the same tradition (Gos. Pet. 8.30–31). As for Pilate’s final word—go, make it as secure as you are able—does Matthew here allow the prefect of Judea a touch of sardonic humor? Does Matthew’s Pilate really not expect much from the abilities of this particular group?36 It is possible, though the hint, if hint it truly is, is delicate. So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone (27:66). In any case, there is humor in this situation whether Pilate sees it or not. “Why do the kings of the earth rise up in revolt, and the princes plot together, against the LORD and against his anointed? . . . He whose throne is in heaven is laughing, the Lord has them in derision” (Ps 2:2, 4). Throughout the entire story of the guard at the tomb, as Eduard Schweizer pertinently observed, “there still resounds something of the laughter of God, which breaks through not only tombs that are barricaded, but all the mental manipulations of humankind.”37 But we anticipate!

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And that he has been raised Late on the Sabbath, as it was drawing on toward evening on the first day of the week,38 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulcher (28:1). Matthew has only two of Mark’s three women visit the tomb—perhaps because only two of Mark’s three are known to him; in any case, he identifies them exactly as he did at the burial (27:61). Matthew, like Mark, has the women showing respect for the Sabbath by waiting until Sabbath is over before they go to the tomb. Unlike Mark, however, who has them wait until morning, Matthew has them hastening to the tomb in the evening twilight, as soon as the Sabbath is over. He omits all Mark’s details about the purchase of spices, the women’s plan to anoint Jesus’ body, and their subsequent concern about how they were to enter the tomb. Presumably he considers these details to be unnecessary because, in the event, the project came to nothing. Instead, the women come simply to see—in other words, to continue amid growing darkness the grieving vigil that they began at the time of Jesus’ death and burial. But then, what they see is a series of prodigies matching those that accompanied Christ’s death. God is on the move! And behold, there was a great earthquake (seismos); for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it (28:2). We have spoken of touches of humor in this narrative, and indeed, this particular scene might be played as comedy. Human precautions have been taken with all the grim seriousness of human authority, and now those precautions are brushed lightly aside. That hefty rock (lithon megan), which was meant to contain the Christ, turns out to be nothing more than a perch for God’s angel, who sits on it—possibly with a mocking grin?—inviting all who will to join him in the Easter joke (risus paschalis).39 And though it is evening, the world grows light, for the angel’s appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow.40 Just as the brightness of the star shining in the darkness of night led the magi to the birth of Christ at the beginning of the gospel, so now the brightness of angelic presence in the growing darkness leads the women to his resurrection. And for fear of him the guards were shaken (eseisthēsan) and became as dead (28:2–4). The guards do not see the joke. Perhaps they are serious people. So they are shaken, just as the earth was shaken by the earthquake. The word play (seismos/eseisthēsan) is surely deliberate and with fine irony Matthew notes that it is now they, the guards (not Jesus!), who are as dead. The implicit theme—the weakness of human power before God’s power—is entirely biblical: “How glorious you are! More splendid than the everlasting mountains! The strong of heart have been despoiled; they sink into sleep; none of the warriors can lift a hand” (Ps 76:4–5).

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The angel does not, however, address the guards, but the women. “You (humeis) need not fear!—the pronoun is emphatic, and clearly separates the women from the soldiers. And the reason why they need not fear is clear. “For I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified” (28:5). They were already on the right track, even though they did not know the full truth of it. But that track will now lead them to something for which they might not have dared hope: “He is not here; for he has risen, as he said” (28:6a). Just as in Mark—just, indeed, as in the apostolic formula—one subject holds good for all the verbs: Jesus who was crucified is the very one who is not here, for he is risen. It is the same Jesus whom they have known and followed whose victory is now announced. “Come!” In contrast to Mark, the women have not already entered the tomb, so now they are invited to do so. “See the place where he lay! Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead” (28:6b-7a). In Mark the women are told to tell “his disciples and Peter,” and Matthew’s omission of Peter here has puzzled commentators. Yet it is of a piece with the Lord’s final word to the church, which, as we shall see, also simply addresses “the eleven.” More importantly, Mark’s simple instruction to the women to tell the disciples that they will see Jesus in Galilee (Mark 16:7) is preceded in Matthew by instruction to declare to his disciples the full apostolic faith: he has risen from the dead (compare 1 Cor 15:20). Thus commissioned, there can be no doubt that for Matthew the two women are in the fullest sense apostolae apostolorum—apostles for the apostles. The angel then adapts the Markan instruction so that it becomes a promise: and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I have told you.” So they departed quickly from the tomb with awe and great gladness (meta phobou kai charas megalēs), and ran to tell his disciples (28:7b–8). Matthew fully appreciates the awe (or “fear”) at divine revelation that is the beginning of wisdom, but, in distinction from Mark, he speaks also of the profound joy that goes with it. All who have ever found hope, love, or forgiveness where they least expected it and from one whom they believed vastly above them—and above all, any who have sensed these things in connection with the divine, the mysterium tremendum—will appreciate something of those emotions, superficially contradictory, but in reality not at all so, upon which the evangelist here touches.41

And that he appeared And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Hail!” And they approached him and embraced his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me” (28:9–10). Various commentators point to similarities between the narrative of

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Jesus’ first appearance here and that which is in John 20:11–18.42 The similarities are indeed quite striking. Both narratives involve Jesus and Mary Magdalene; both involve Jesus being in some way physically held; both involve a charge to go to the disciples, who are referred to (despite all their failures) as his brethren; and both involve bringing to them the news of the resurrection. Yet each evangelist tells the story in his own way. For Matthew, what seems to matter is that Jesus knew the women and was known by them. This is the only story of an appearance by the risen Jesus in which those encountered showed no signs of initial doubt or uncertainty. So he greeted them, “Hail!” (chairete)— a normal Hellenistic greeting between friends—and for their part they approached and embraced him as one they loved and trusted. The point is not labored, but Matthew’s claim is clear: the Risen One who met the women was the Jesus whom they knew, and he was no ghost. Yet equally clearly this was not just a meeting between friends. The women did not merely embrace Jesus; they embraced his feet and worshiped (prosekunēsan) him. Their homage, we note, was neither interrupted nor refused—in marked contrast to what happens, for example, in the Revelation to John when an angelic being is offered worship (“See thou do it not! Worship God!”; Rev 19:10, 22:9). Apparently Matthew considers that this worship, which was and is proper toward none but the God of Israel (Isa 45:21–24), was and is properly offered to Jesus.43 Again, the point is not labored, but it is clear. Having worshiped, the women receive their reassurance—“Fear not!” Although they have shown no fear, it is still significant that for Matthew to approach and worship the Risen One is to learn that he casts out fear. They also receive their commission from him, which is essentially what was told them by the angel: they are to tell his brethren that they will see him in Galilee. So the way is prepared for Matthew’s final scene, the climax of his gospel—or, at least, the way is almost prepared. This is a world in which there is belief, as the women have shown. But there is also unbelief, and before Matthew leads us to his climax, he will oblige us to take one final look at that. While they were going—even as the women were actually on their way to perform the obedience of faith—behold, some of the guard went into the city. Matthew says nothing about a time frame, so presumably the matter was not important to him, but I imagine his assumption was that the events he had described so far had taken up the previous night, and that as the guards awoke from their stunned sleep and the women began their journey to the disciples, it was morning. So the guard went to the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came

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by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed; and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day (28:11–15). This narrative is the finishing stroke of Matthew’s polemic against those who oppose the gospel as his community preaches it. “Matthew is reporting anti-Christian propaganda alive in the Jewish community.”44 The expression he uses—to this day—suggests that some time has passed since the event (as indeed it had, according to the usual dating of the gospel), yet still the synagogue is asserting, in contradiction to the apostolic confession of Matthew’s community, that the disciples stole Jesus’ body. Thus accused of deception, the evangelist retorts in kind: “No! You who deny the resurrection are the real deceivers, and have been from the start!”45 His polemic ended, Matthew turns to the climax of his story. Now the eleven disciples—Matthew’s choice to say “the eleven disciples” rather than simply “the disciples” reminds us, gently but firmly, that one of them had betrayed him—the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them (28:16). Evidently the women had delivered their message. Although we knew that the message was about Galilee, we have not heard before that Jesus had directed the disciples to a mountain.46 That said, we are perhaps not entirely surprised, for at other points in the gospel a mountain has been a place where Jesus revealed himself, as at the Sermon on the Mount and the transfiguration (5:1, 17:1). Perhaps even more importantly, in the Hebrew Scriptures, mountains have at key moments been places of God’s self-revelation (Gen 22:2; Exod 19:20–20:3, 1 Kgs 19:11). And seeing (idontes) him, they worshiped him; but some doubted (28:17).47 That Jesus was seen is indicated with the briefest of participles, seeing him (idontes). In other words, “he appeared” as the apostolic formulary said. Beyond that Matthew tells us nothing, either of Jesus’ appearance or whence he came. These things do not interest the evangelist. He does pause long enough, however, to give us a rather surprising reality check: some doubted (edistasan)!48 Even those who originally saw and worshipped the risen Christ did not experience faith and adoration as states of mind beyond possibility of conflict or confusion. As Luz points out, for Matthew the disciples’ faith, like ours, “lives between trust and despondency, between certainty and faith.”49 Yet this, interesting though it is, is not the center of Matthew’s interest. That center is the word that the Risen One now has for the church, doubting or not, and to that word Matthew now turns. And Jesus came and said to them,50 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given (edothē) to me (28:18). What Satan (on another mountain51) had offered to Jesus in return for his worshiping Satan is now his anyway. The verb

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has been given (edothē) appears precisely to echo the word of the tempter, “All these I will give (dōsō) you” (Matt 4:9). Indeed, there is more, for Satan could offer only “the kingdoms of the earth and their glory” (4:8), whereas Jesus now has all authority (exousia) in heaven and on earth. The Greek word here translated as authority (exousia) does not mean merely “the right to control or command,” but tends also to imply “capability, might, or power.”52 In other words, Jesus’ word here suggests not only that whatever claim he makes is valid, but that it is also effective. If all authority in heaven and earth now belongs to the Risen One, that means that there is in effect no authority other than his either in Heaven, that is, the realm where God’s will is done, or in earth, where disciples must still pray for it (Matt 6:12). Commentators quite often point out that Matthew contains no ascension or exaltation of the Risen One, and in a sense that is true, in that the gospel contains no separate tradition as do (in their different ways) Luke and John. And yet in another sense, the Risen One who comes to the disciples and has all authority has already been exalted.53 And how has this come about? We turn our attention again to the verb has been given (edothē). The passive—here properly called passivum divinum, “divine passive”—points to the fact that the one who was recently condemned, mocked, and crucified is now exalted by God, exactly as he said he would be when (in terms from Daniel 7:13–14 and Psalm 110) he spoke first to his disciples (Matt 16:28) and afterward to the Sanhedrin (26:64), about the exaltation of the Son of Man. This is, of course, a large claim to make, and especially in a world where often neither Jesus’ power nor the power of God is much apparent (Ps 94:1–7). Yet in another sense the evangelist, writing in about the year 80, is saying nothing new and claiming nothing for Jesus that has not been claimed before. That all things are subject to the Crucified and Risen One is the Easter faith, the faith of the church, and has been from the beginning (Rom 1:4; Phil 2:8–11; cf. Col 1:18–20; Eph 1:20–22; Heb 1:2–4; 1 Pet 4:21–22). The Easter faith is, then, the first part of Jesus’ address to his disciples, and as his immediately following words indicate, it is the basis for his instruction to them. “Go, therefore (oun),” he says, and make disciples (28:19a). The word therefore makes clear that what follows, that is, the work to which Jesus sends them, is dependent on what has been named, that is, his exousia, and is dependent on nothing else.54 As Karl Barth pointed out in reference to this text, the directions that Jesus is about to give to his disciples “point to an enterprise which will neither depend on the resources or achievements of the disciples themselves nor be thwarted by their inadequacy. ‘He hath begotten us again . . . by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’ (1 Pet 1:3). This is true quite apart from any inherent capacity of the disciples or any endowments of their

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own which they bring to the task. But it is also true quite apart from the obstacles which they might put in the way of this event.”55 The imperative, make disciples (mathēteusate56) is grammatically the main verb of the sentence, upon which the other verbs depend. It is also the central command, which the other verbs explicate. It is Jesus himself who makes disciples (4:18–22; 10:1), so to make disciples is to participate overtly and explicitly in his work—as, indeed, by being disciples, the Twelve had been called to participate in his work from the beginning (10:7–8). Of whom then shall they make disciples? “Of all nations” (28:19b). Clearly this represents something of a departure from the instruction of Matthew 10—“Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (10:5b–6). “The resurrection marks the end of the exclusive focus on Israel. The Jewish mission is now the world mission.”57 “The disciples are to share their discipleship not only with their fellow Jews but also with non-Jews.”58 But what exactly will that mean in practice? Is the original mission charge expanded, or is it replaced? Does all the nations mean that the church is now to make disciples exclusively among the Gentiles (as some modern commentators suggest59), or does it mean that the mission to Israel is now expanded to become part of a world mission (which was the opinion of the ancient church, the medieval church, and is still the opinion of many commentators60)? I incline to the latter view. In view of the claim that has just been made for Jesus having “all authority” I do find intrinsically unlikely the notion that Jesus’ own people are nevertheless excluded from the mission. If Jesus’ call and authority does not extend to historic Israel, what is the significance of its universality “in heaven and on earth”? Still, I must grant that the text is not abolutely clear. Perhaps, again, the uncertainty arises from a degree of uncertainty in Matthew’s own mind or the mind of his community. It may be that the Gentile mission (which seems to have been already underway; see 24:14) was, as Luz says, still “controversial; if so, Matthew strengthens one wing of his church. It may be that the church was uncertain; if so, the risen Jesus legitimizes the decision they had already made.” But of course, as Luz adds, “We do not know these things.”61 What, in any case, will it mean, to make disciples? Two elements are identified. First, it will mean baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The striking omission at this point of any reference to circumcision does seem fatal to the notion that Matthew regarded that rite as necessary for Gentile converts. Possibly (even probably) like Paul in Acts he still regarded it as proper for the male offspring of Jewish believers,62 but even that is not spelled out. Perhaps, like the author of Colossians 2:11–12, he had

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come to see baptism as replacing circumcision as the rite of entry into the people of God.63 In the New Testament and other early Christian literature, specifically Christian baptism is generally distinguished from other forms of baptism by being connected with the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:15; Rom 6:3; Gal 3:27; Did. 9:5). Only here, however, and twice in the Didache (7:1, 3) is it further distinguished by being described as in the name of (eis to onoma) (that is, “with regard to” or “in dedication to”64) the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.65 Of course, and as the commentators invariably point out, we may not here read into Matthew’s intentions and understanding all that is involved in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Trinitarian formulary. Yet in our eagerness to make this point, we should not forget how extraordinary the linking of “the Son” with “the Father” and “the Holy Spirit” was for a Jewish writer and a Jewish community. It is of a piece with Paul’s regularly setting God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ side by side in his salutations as the source of divine grace (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:2; Gal 1:3; Phil 1:2; 1 Thess 1:1; Phlm 3). And within Matthew’s own text, it is certainly of a piece with the evangelist’s frequent insistence that the Lord Jesus is properly “worshiped” (2:2, 8, 11; 8:2; 9:18; 14:33; 15:25; 20:20; 28:9, 17). So—it is true that we do not have here the later Trinitarian formulary, but we do have the essential awareness of God in Christ which finally made that formulary both necessary and correct.66 The second element in making disciples involves teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (28:20a). Matthew contains more of the teaching of Jesus, set out in an orderly and careful fashion, than any other of the gospels. In that respect, as in others, his five discourses are unique. This is the new law, the law of Christ. But as the old law included the narrative of God’s saving acts, so does the new. Jesus’ teaching as Matthew describes it repeatedly witnesses to the story of Jesus’ own life, death, and resurrection (16:21, 27; 17:22–23; 20:18–19, 28) for the forgiveness of sins (1:21; 9:6; 19:32–35; 26:28) and his claim (certainly put forward in this moment) to be Lord (kurios) over the whole world (11:27; 16:27; 28:18). So in “teaching” all that Jesus commanded, the disciples who make disciples are also to tell that story, and there is no essential difference between what is said here and Luke’s account of them going forth to proclaim “the gospel” and “the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47) and to witness to the resurrection (Acts 1:22), or Paul’s proclamation that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:11).67 “And lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (28:20b). And lo, I (kai idou, egō) is formal, ceremonial, and even hieratic, as befits the closing and consummating promise of the gospel. Matthew began his story with the angel’s words associating Jesus with God’s eternal divine presence (1:23).

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In the middle of that story Jesus himself promised to be ever present with those who met “in his name” (18:20).68 And now Matthew ends with the same note: I am with you always. He thereby points us back not only to those earlier moments in the story of Jesus but to times before it, to the God of creation, the God of the patriarchs, and the God of the exodus, who has always chosen to be “with” his people. Sometimes this presence is seen as a source of help, and such it is: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble . . . The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge” (Ps 46:1, 7). But most often and most profoundly we are to see in it God’s own desire for human presence—a desire which, according to Scripture, was part of God’s dealing with creation from the beginning (Gen 3:9)—a desire which humankind for its part has continually thwarted (Gen 3:8, 10), even though God’s presence is the only source of our true fulfillment and a key part of that very thing for which we were made (Ps 42:1). Promising this very presence, the risen and exalted Jesus of Matthew also points forward into the life and history of the church, to future readers of Matthew, and to whomever may come after them. Jesus promises to be with his disciples to the close of the age. What does this mean? Matthew has already used the expression “the close of the age” (sunteleia aiōnos) several times: it occurs in the disciples’ question to Jesus at 24:3 and in Jesus’ parables at 13:39, 40, and 49. In all these cases it refers to eschatological events that are still in the future.69 So here at 28:20 it evidently refers to the final, future advent (parousia) of the Son of Man, of which also the evangelist has spoken more than once (16:27; 25:31–33). Until that advent, then, the exalted One will be present with his disciples, but his will be a sacramental presence, discerned by the eyes of faith. Jesus’ advent, his parousia, at the close of the age will however make that presence clear to all (24:30!). Then his disciples will need no sacrament. Then what (following Robert Jenson) we referred to earlier as the church’s “detour” will be over, and her eyes will see the risen and exalted One as his first disciples saw him, clearly and without a veil. Matthew does not spell out the distinction that I have just made—for that, we must wait for Luke—but it is implicit in his narrative as a whole.

7 Luke

Despite the fact that in most editions of the New Testament the Gospel according to Saint Luke and the Book of Acts are separated by the Gospel according to Saint John, it has become commonplace among biblical scholars of all schools to speak of “Luke–Acts” as a single work in two parts. This is certainly correct. Prefaces to each part, the former to the entire work as it now stands,1 the latter referring to the former part and briefly introducing what is to follow (Luke 1:1–4; Acts 1:1–142), clearly link the two volumes in a way that has parallels in other literature of the period.3 The two prefaces are addressed to “most excellent Theophilus,” who is otherwise unknown but who was, given the general circumstances of ancient book production, probably a real person, and Luke’s patron.4 The form of address—“most excellent (kratiste)”—would be appropriate in addressing someone of rank: it is so used to the Roman governor Felix at Acts 23:26. It would also be appropriate as a form of polite address with no connotation of office.5 Both prefaces are written in the first person, and both give a strong sense of authorial presence and consciousness. Frustratingly, what the author does not do at this point is tell us who he6 is!7 Irenaeus of Lyons, writing late in the second century, claimed that the gospel was the work of Luke, the “the companion of Paul” (cf. Col 4:14) (Against Heresies 3.1.1). So did the Muratorian Canon, probably written at about the same time.8 Such a claim may be born out internally by the so-called “we” passages in Acts, where the author seems to imply that he was

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with Paul on at least some of his journeys (Acts 16:10–18; 20:4–21, 26; 27:1–16). Whether Irenaeus was right continues, however, to be a matter of dispute, with some serious modern commentators inclined to think that he was,9 while others doubt it.10 Naturally, there is parallel debate about the significance of the “we” passages. For our present purposes I do not think that we need to insist on a decision. I shall refer to the author as “Luke” for convenience, and I note that in any case he does not claim to be a witness of much that he describes, and certainly not of those parts of his narrative that are of especial interest to us in our study of Jesus’ resurrection. As for the date of Luke–Acts’ composition, the most widely accepted view is that the books were written at some time in the period 75 to 85, which is to say they were written after the destruction of Jerusalem and well after the deaths of Peter and Paul.11 What kind of a work is Luke–Acts? What did its author intend? The greater part of the former book—that is, Luke 1:5 to the end (what we call “the Gospel according to Saint Luke”)—is, like Matthew, a revision of Mark, though apparently independently of Matthew. Not surprisingly then, like Matthew and Mark, it has many of the features that we associate with a Greco-Roman “life.”12 Nevertheless, “Greco-Roman life” will hardly cover what we need to say about the genre of Luke–Acts as a whole, for Luke’s account of “all that Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1) has in the course of his writing been folded into a much bigger project.13 While the former book is largely concerned with subjects proper to the life of an individual, the latter takes up the life and growth of a community, “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).14 But why? What is Luke’s purpose? Unique among New Testament authors, Luke has, as we have already noted, given us his prefaces, and the former of these seems to indicate an answer to that question, at least in part: Inasmuch as many have undertaken to arrange in proper order (anataxasthai15) an account (diēgēsin16) of the events which have been fulfilled among us (tōn peplērophorēmenōn en ēmin pragmatōn17), just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having from the beginning followed all things carefully, to write an account for you in an orderly sequence (kathexēs18), most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth (epignōs . . . tēn asphaleia19) of the matters (logōn) concerning which you have received instruction (katēchēthēs) (Luke 1:1–4) Commentators for more than two centuries have pointed to elements in this preface that suggest a desire to conform, and be seen to conform, to the

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conventions of Greek literature.20 It and the opening verses of Acts have been linked in particular to the conventions of Hellenistic history writing.21 Yet their appeal is probably intended to be much wider. As Loveday Alexander has shown us, in Luke 1:1–4 each of the key words is to be found in a rather broad range of technical writing wherein, as well as firsthand experience, faithfulness and accuracy in the transmission of information were considered important. In particular, the style and vocabulary of Luke 1:4 are not so much academic as businesslike, finding their closest parallels in official reports and letters and in a broader area of literature which Alexander characterizes as “the scientific tradition.”22 Much the same may be said of the preface to Acts: neither the dedicatory address nor the recapitulation of the previous volume fit especially well with the normal expectations of Greek historiography. Both fit better with the conventions of a more marginal type of writing that often involves the technical and the philosophical. Alexander calls this “scientific literature.”23 That does not mean, of course, that Luke was writing or thought he had written a scientific discourse.24 The point is rather that his preface makes use of conventions associated with a whole range of compositions that did not correspond with formally defined genres such as historiography. In other words, Luke’s preface places—and is perhaps intended to place—his work outside of these genres, while insisting nonetheless that he has done careful research, that his information is reliable, and that what he has written ought to be taken seriously. Throughout his work he will continue to write in language that is uninfluenced by the embellishments of classicism and that, therefore, would not in itself be suitable for a formal “history” according to the standards described by Lucian and aspired to by Josephus. Nonetheless, Luke’s language clearly belongs within the upper ranges of an educated Koine. Moreover, as commentators have noted, throughout his work Luke will allow his written style to be influenced by the Septuagint, that is, by biblical Greek.25 This appears to be a deliberate choice, and is, as Alexander points out, “classicism” of a kind, though not a kind that would appeal to those who required the evolving and more generally recognized classicism of the first century or the Atticism of the second.26 What then does Luke intend? Some of his intentions are obvious. With regard to the words and works of Jesus, he has access to material that he does not find in Mark. Again, even while in his own prose Luke does not aspire to classicism, he evidently thinks that Mark’s prose is dreadful, and therefore he consistently tries to improve it.27 In other words, he wants to tell the story of Jesus with better information and more gracefully than Mark told it. In Acts he wants to tell the story of the community that has continued to follow and proclaim the risen Jesus, a story which so far no one has told at all. Why does he

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wish to do all this? Here we come to the heart of the matter. Undoubtedly Luke’s major concern is theological. C. K. Barrett has summed it up: “Christian faith is the truth, the truth of God: magna est, et praevalebit.”28 Luke wishes to tell the story of God’s grace in Jesus Christ, and of the church as the continuing sign and instrument of that grace. He believes, moreover (and if he did learn anything from Paul, this surely was a part of it), that this story was the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. Against what he sees as Jewish polemic hostile to the church, he argues throughout his narrative that followers of the Christian “way” are the true heirs of Israel (Luke 1:32–33; 2:29–32; Acts 7:2–53; 26:6–8). And this, perhaps, we should connect with the “biblical” style of his prose: his style is a constant reminder that he regards the story he tells as the true continuation and consummation of the biblical story. That does not mean that Luke has no other purposes or interests. As we encounter his text, and in particular parts of his narrative such as the stories of Jesus’ annunciation and birth or Paul’s shipwreck, again and again we have the impression that at times he wrote simply with delight, delight in a good story told as well as he could, delight that he wanted to share with his audience. And he is none the worse for that.29 In purely literary terms, this is his greatest gift, and generations of Christians have reason to be grateful that he had it. Yet another agenda runs through Luke’s work. As I have argued elsewhere,30 a significant element in his concerns is to provide what Philip E. Esler calls “legitimation”: a social process necessary for those who become members of a new order, and who need to have that order explained and justified to them, especially if they have ties and commitments that are still important to them and that bind them to an old order.31 In Luke’s case, this meant that his work was addressed to Romans or persons loyal to Rome who were either already members of the church or who were thinking of becoming so. It was designed to enable them to see that Christianity as a movement was neither subversive of good Roman order nor opposed by Roman order when that order functioned properly.32 As François Bovon puts it, “Luke wants to attest to the truth of Christian faith and to quell Roman fears about the Christian mission. Luke is convinced that the gospel is politically innocuous; on the contrary, the ethical attitude of the Christians can only work to the advantage of their pagan neighbors.”33 To this end Luke emphasizes in his first volume that from the beginning Jesus’ family chose to identify themselves with Roman imperium even when they did not need to do so (Luke 2:1–5) and that even at the end neither the prefect of Judea nor Rome’s loyal (if foxy) client Herod Antipas ever found any crime in Jesus (Luke 23:13–15). In his second volume Luke repeatedly shows that responsible Roman soldiers, administrators, and civil servants not only

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found no fault with agents of the gospel such as Peter and Paul but were interested in what they had to say and even accepting of it (Acts 13:4–12; 18:12–17; 27:1–44; 28:1–10). Into this context will have fitted Luke’s insistence that Christians were the proper heirs of Israel, for this implied, among other things, that Christianity was not something new but rather deserved the respect that Rome normally paid to antiquity.34 Here, too, will have fitted Luke’s unpretentious but “biblical” style of writing, suited to his target audience, among them practical men of principle together with their families, the kinds of person whom Vespasian had been trying throughout the seventies to place—or, at least, was alleged to have been trying to place—in positions of responsibility throughout the empire.35 For such as these, Luke’s style could work as an “insider” language, giving them the sense of belonging to a special and sacred community, even as what it said assured them that being part of that community did not mean that they had to betray all that they had valued before.

Luke’s Account of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Luke’s fundamental concern is, as I have said, theological. It is the story of Christianity that he wishes to tell, and it is the Lord Jesus to whom he wishes his audience to turn. Therefore Luke remains, and intends to remain, a witness to the common apostolic faith, just as were Paul and Mark before him. His use of Mark, his evident admiration for Paul and the Pauline mission, his repeated affirmations in the first half of Acts of outlines of the apostolic faith (Acts 2:14– 39; 3:13–26; 4:10–12; 5:30–32; 10:36–43; 13:17–41)—all these elements indicate that Luke, just as much as Paul, would have said of that faith, “whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.” The four pillars of apostolic proclamation—that Christ died, that he was buried, that he rose, that he was seen—are central to Luke’s narrative. Throughout the gospel, he has followed Mark in preparing us for Jesus’ death and resurrection (9:22 par. Mark 8:31; 9:44 par. Mark 9:31; 18:31–33 par. Mark 10:33–34). This thematic centrality is reflected in the fact that the four “pillars” are also physically central. Luke’s account of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and appearances to his followers, culminating in Jesus’ ascension to God, spans the two parts of his work, completing the former and opening the latter, so that the two volumes are actually tied together by the witness that is central to Christian hope. In a writer as self-conscious and careful as is Luke, this is surely no accident.36 The following analysis of the last part of the gospel and the opening to Acts is therefore again conducted under the four heads of the Pauline apostolic formula. In discussing a narrative that covers some of the same ground as that

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in Mark and Matthew, I again assume my readers’ familiarity with what I have already said about their presentations. As we examine Luke’s record, we shall see that, while it is clear that his accounts of the Risen One’s appearances appear in several respects to be independent of those in other parts of the gospel tradition—indeed, the Emmaus story is unique—in his own way Luke nonetheless maintains vigorously precisely those elements in the resurrection tradition that we have noticed elsewhere, that is to say, he insists on the physical aspects of the resurrection and also on the transformation of physicality that it involves. Arguably, Luke’s accounts of Jesus’ eating with his disciples and of his ascension and the cloud that finally hides him from their sight press both elements even more forcibly upon the audience than do the accounts in Matthew. Luke also spells out an issue that Paul touched on in passing if at all and that is only implicit in Mark and Matthew, namely, that the appearances of the risen Jesus have for the present ceased, but that he will come again. From Luke alone—indeed, more precisely, from Acts alone (1:3)—we inherit the “forty days” scenario of Jesus’ resurrection appearances completed with his ascension—a scenario now enshrined in the calendar of the Christian church.

That Christ died It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, because the sun’s light failed (23:44–45a). Luke’s account of Jesus’ death follows Mark, but he tells the story in his own way. His time frame—noon, and the accompanying darkness—are as in Mark, but for the latter Luke offers a genitive absolute by way of explanation: it was because the sun’s light failed (tou hēliou eklipontos).37 And he accompanies it with a second prodigy that Mark had reserved for later in the narrative: and the curtain of the temple was torn in two (23:45b). Luke is no clearer about the significance of this or which curtain was torn than is Mark. Perhaps he intends us to see no more than a pair of ominous portents accompanying the death of the Messiah, both being signs that, as Jesus said at the time of his arrest, this was “the hour” of his enemies and “the power of darkness” (22:53b)—a remark, be it noted, that has no parallel in accounts of the arrest in the other gospels. And the veil of the temple was split in two, The midday sun refused to shine, The thunder rumbled and the lightning wrote An unknown language in the sky. (James Weldon Johnson, “The Crucifixion”38)

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Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (23:46). As in Mark, the dying Jesus cries with a loud voice, but he does not utter the Markan (and Matthean) “cry of dereliction.” According to later rabbinical tradition, the verse that the Lukan Jesus does utter—Psalm 31:6—should be recited by the Torah scholar at bedtime, and he needs no other protection since he is “protected by the Torah thought which occupies his mind.”39 That is the spirit in which Luke’s Jesus dies upon the cross. Wise and faithful to the last, he has promised paradise to the repentant thief (23:43), perhaps he has also prayed for his persecutors (23:34),40 and now he commends himself trustingly to his Father. Having said this, he breathed his last. “He says his prayer, then he dies” (Johnson).41 Thus he accomplishes his exodus,42 as he was destined to do, in Jerusalem (9:31). When the centurion43 saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, “Certainly this man was righteous” (23:47). It is only a little while since the soldiers were mocking him (23:36–37). Now their centurion gives glory to God and declares Jesus righteous. Luke’s characterization of the centurion’s conversion is stronger than that in the other gospels. He becomes, in effect, a righteous Gentile, for he glorifies the God of Israel. Moreover, he confesses not that Jesus is “son of God,” as in Mark, but that he is righteous (dikaios). Luke may have felt the phrase “son of God” on the lips of a pagan was suspect; in any case, the confession that he does place on the centurion’s lips is richly significant in terms of Luke’s whole theology. In this context, dikaios does not only mean “innocent” (as the RSV has it)—although that gets something of its sense, for Jesus’ innocence is something that Luke’s whole account of the trial has brought out. Nor does it simply mean “a righteous person,” although that is also true. But for Luke Jesus is above all “[God’s] Servant . . . the holy and righteous [ton . . . dikaion] one” (Acts 3:14; cf. 7:52; 22:1444) whom his people denied, who “was led as a sheep to the slaughter” (Acts 8:32, citing Isa 53:7). Nor is it accident that this confession is on the lips of an erstwhile pagan centurion, who thereby stands as representative of all those Gentiles who will turn, through the preaching of the Way, to the God of Israel. And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts (23:48). Here is another purely Lukan touch. At every point in his passion narrative, Luke has been at pains to distinguish between the people as a whole and their leaders who have led them astray (Luke 21:38–22:2; 24:19–21). He will continue to make that distinction in Acts (2:47; 4:4; 6:1). Here then, even those who have come out to see the spectacle, to watch the show, are moved to remorse by Jesus’ death, beating their breasts. They stand as representative for all those

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who will turn to Jesus as he is proclaimed among them in Jerusalem in the weeks to come (Acts 21:20). But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things (23:49). In contrast to Mark, Luke has not said explicitly that the male disciples fled after the arrest (see Luke 22:53–54; compare Mark 14:49–53). So at this point in the story, following Luke’s version, we may believe if we choose that the men disciples, or at least some of them, have crept back and are among all his acquaintances who are watching these things. But while Luke seems content to leave us in uncertainty about the men, he leaves us in no doubt about the women. They, as in Mark and Matthew, are present as key witnesses. Unlike Mark, Luke does not at this point tell us who they are, and he does not need to. He has already named them as Jesus’ companions and patrons in the Galilean mission: “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means” (8:2–3). For now, then, Luke needs only to remind us that we have met these women before: they had followed him from Galilee.

He was buried Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though he was a member of the Council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God (23:50–51). Luke does not say that Joseph was a disciple, but his characterization of him, following Mark’s hint, is generous.45 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid (23:52–55). Even more than Matthew, Luke simplifies Mark’s account, omitting the hesitations of Pilate and the mention of the stone in the mouth of the tomb. But the burial remains what was probably a “burial in shame,” and the women who had come with him from Galilee are again identified as witnesses. Luke does, however, add one detail on his own account, and it has the effect of heightening our sense of the women’s initiative. The women did not merely watch. Instead, according to Luke, they followed, and that was how it was that they saw the tomb and how his body was laid.46 As they had followed Jesus in and from Galilee, so now they follow him even in his death. If anyone doubts that Luke admires strong, courageous women, who will act

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boldly and independently upon their principles, this passage surely should lay that doubt to rest. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment (23:56). The final detail is typical of Luke and reminds us of how in the beginning he described Elizabeth and Zechariah: “righteous before God and walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless” (1:6). In the same way, according to Luke, Jesus’ women disciples are also faithful in their obedience to the Law.

He has been raised Again Luke is content to follow Mark’s time frame, having the women come to the tomb in the morning after the Sabbath. But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb (24:1–2)—an unusual slip in Luke’s narrative technique! He is usually quite good at preparing us for what is to come in his story, but on this occasion it rather looks as if he has simply followed Mark (tidying up his Greek, of course), forgetting that he himself has not previously mentioned the stone—but when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus (24:3).47 Unlike the women in Mark, Luke’s women do not have to be invited to look at the place where Jesus was. They go in and see for themselves. While they were perplexed about this (24:4a)—for the empty tomb, taken alone, cannot produce faith48—lo, two men in dazzling clothes suddenly stood (epestēsan49) beside them (24:4b). Mark spoke of a “young man” (neaniskos), whom he evidently understood to be an angelic visitant. Matthew spoke plainly of “an angel.” Luke’s “two men” (andres duo) will also later be spoken of as “angels” (24:23). So why does Luke not go all the way at once and refer to them now as “angels”? Luke Timothy Johnson’s suggestion is surely correct: we are to be reminded of the “two men” (andres duo) who stood with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, speaking of the exodus that he was to accomplish in Jerusalem, the “two men” who were Moses and Elijah (9:30). Luke uses the more restrained expression, and thereby not only links his revelatory moments together, but also reminds us indirectly of that witness by “Moses and all the Prophets” of which the Risen One will himself speak (24:27). The women were filled with holy dread50 and bowed their faces to the ground (24:5a). Luke clearly understands what is involved for the women in this moment when they experience the mysterium tremendum, as is made clear by the solemn act of reverence which they then offer: klinousōn ta prosōpa eis tēn gēn, literally, “they inclined their faces to the ground”—a purely Lukan detail.

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But the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (24:5b). Here is Luke’s version of risus paschalis, the Easter joke. Of course the question is ironic: the angels know quite well why the women have come. But it is a gentle irony,51 paving the way for good tidings of great joy that, like those other angels at the beginning of Luke’s narrative, these angels now bring. “He is not here, but has risen.52 Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that ‘the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again’ ” (24:6–7). Mark’s reference to a future appearance in Galilee is changed by Luke into a reference to the past, a reminder that Jesus had foretold all that would happen. The women are given this good news but, according to Luke, no command to go to the disciples. And apparently they need none, for then they remembered his words (24:8). The women’s behavior corresponds completely to the only instruction that they have been given, and without a command they at once do what is necessary. And returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles (24:9–10). At this point, this crucial point, Luke again names his eyewitnesses. The insertion interrupts his narrative flow and lacks his usual grace as a storyteller—a sure indication of how important he considered it to remind his hearers of the known autoptai (eyewitnesses) to the events he has described. But these words seemed to them an idle tale (lēros), and they did not believe them (24:11). It would be hard to imagine how the first proclamation of the resurrection might have received a more disappointing response. Lēros is a word used to speak of something “which is totally devoid of anything worthwhile, idle talk, nonsense, humbug.”53 Yet we, Luke’s audience, know that this is a wonderful moment of situational irony. Here is yet more of the paschal joke, and at this point it is joke at the expense of male arrogance. The male disciples for their part are of course talking “sense”—as the world understands “sense.” The dead do not rise—or at least not yet. Everyone knows that. The women’s words are foolishness. Yet the paschal joke offers another possibility: “if any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise” (1 Cor 3:18). Only Peter, apparently, is sufficiently moved at least to investigate. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw only the linen cloths (ta othonia); then he went home, amazed at what had happened (24:12).54 Yet even Peter merely goes home amazed, no wiser than when he set out. He has seen the empty tomb, but that alone is not enough. The empty tomb is a disputable sign. He needs to listen to the folly of what the women are telling him, and there is as yet no clear sign that he has done that.

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He appeared At this point, Luke changes scene, and proceeds to give us one of the most striking and memorable narratives in the entire gospel tradition. Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus,55 about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened (24:13–14). It is notable that the story begins within walking distance of Jerusalem, and, in the phrase that Luke himself will use at a later point in the narrative (24:32, 35), “on the road” (en tē hodō). Commentators have often noted, first, the centrality of Jerusalem in Luke’s narrative—the gospel starts and ends there; Acts starts there, revolves around it, and only gradually moves forth into the world56—and second, the extent to which for Luke Jesus’ “way” (hodos) is a way of speaking of his mission (e.g., 9:57; 18:35; 19:36; 20:21), a “way” that is fulfilled with the “ex-odos” (departure), about which he talked with Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration.57 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself (autos Iēsous) came near and went with them (24:15). Luke’s expression autos Iēsous, Jesus himself, is emphatic. As we listen to the evangelist, there is to be no doubt in our minds that this was really Jesus. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him (24:16). No doubt, as Fitzmyer points out, by this “dramatic concealment” Luke builds up suspense.58 But as we have already noticed, it is also true that an initial failure to recognize Jesus (always, of course, followed by recognition of him later) is a common feature of the appearance traditions (e.g., 24:37; John 20:14–15; 21:4). And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas,59 answered him (24:17–18a). A feature of this narrative that continues to puzzle commentators is that Luke names one disciple but not the other. Why does he do that? And who is the other disciple? Does Luke mean us to understand that they are husband and wife?60 Is the unnamed disciple Simon Peter?61 Luke does not say, and the simplest explanation for that is probably the best: the tradition that Luke had received did not contain the name of the other disciple, and he did not choose to invent it. In other words, the surprising nature of the narrative may be a result of the evangelist’s caution at this key point in his story, pointing precisely to the fact that he does not allow “novelistic interest” to control him. Even of Cleopas we know nothing, and perhaps Luke did not either. Perhaps that was the very thing about him and the story that appealed to the evangelist. Already it has been a feature of this narrative that all proper notions of hierarchy have been reversed. The women have understood what is happening. The men have not. Now, even among male disciples, perhaps it is not accidental that the first

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who are enabled to understand are not, so to speak, the apostolic “top brass” but nobodies, the disciples of whom no one had ever heard. Perhaps Luke enjoyed that. Be that as it may, Cleopas responds brusquely: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people (pantos tou laou62), and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him” (24:18b–20). Characteristically, Luke emphasizes yet again that the Jewish people as a whole had not delivered Jesus up but only their leaders (see, e.g., 19:47–48; Acts 5:12–17). “But we had hoped that he was the one who was about to redeem Israel” [ho mellōn loutrousthai ton Israēl]” (24:21a). The choice of expression is crucial. This, indeed, is precisely what those under prophetic inspiration had promised about Jesus in the beginning of the gospel. God, declared Zechariah, has “visited and wrought redemption for his people” (1:68), and the aged Anna, equally inspired, proclaimed him to “all that were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (2:38). “Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive” (24:21b–23). The narrative continues to circle around the tomb, and the two disciples’ report of the women’s story is ambiguous, for while the “two men in dazzling clothes” are now called angels, it is not clear whether this is a patronizing parody of the women’s story or a heightened rehearsal of it. What is clear, however, is that by now Peter is not the only one who has verified some part of their account, for “some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said” (24:24a).63 Again, the narrative circles back to the emptiness of the tomb. This was strange indeed. “But him,” they add, “they did not see” (24:24b). The word him (auton), placed at the beginning of the sentence, is emphatic: without Jesus’ presence the empty tomb is strange, but it is merely strange, an oddity, a quirk of history, something to be explained, nothing more. Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” (24:25). Cleopas and his companion—and all the others who thought like them—were not wrong to look to Jesus for the redemption of Israel. They were only wrong in that they did not set that promise in its proper context and in particular because they left something out—something of which the disciples had, indeed, been told more than once (Luke 9:22, 44: 18:31–33). “Was it not necessary (ouchi . . . edei) that

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the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (24:26). The phrase was . . . necessary (edei) points, as always, to the divine purpose. Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures (24:27). There is correspondence between the events of Jesus’ life and death and Israel’s Scriptures. The Scriptures gave to the early church a vocabulary and symbols with which to comprehend the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, while the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus gave them a new way of understanding the Scriptures.64 This, as we have seen, is essentially what the apostolic formula implied by its claim that the death and resurrection of Christ were “according to the Scriptures.”65 We have already commented on Luke’s particular concern to claim that Christians and those who follow the Christian “’way” are the true heirs of Israel and so heirs to the promises of Scripture.66 Here Jesus himself is shown to be the authoritative teacher who points to this connection and initiates its perception.67 Moreover, Luke’s emphatic, thrice repeated all [pasin . . . pantōn . . . pasais] (24:25, 27) makes explicit something that, when we listened to the apostolic formula quoted by Paul, we merely inferred—namely, that the whole of Scripture is a preparation for the gospel (praeparatio evangelica). As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them (24:28–29). Perhaps, as Frederick W. Danker suggests, Luke’s GrecoRoman hearers, familiar with the motif of the hero who like Odysseus returns to his home unrecognized, would have been especially alert at this point.68 Then, when he was reclining at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and was giving it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him (28:30–31a). Naturally as we hear these words, “took . . . blessed . . . broke . . . was giving,” we are reminded of Jesus feeding the crowd (9:16) and the Last Supper (22:19), and presumably we are meant to be. The hero has returned to his own; our guest turns out to be our host; and for us, as for Cleopas and his companion, Jesus becomes known in the breaking of the bread (24:25). Following aorists for the three earlier verbs took . . . blessed . . . broke . . . , the imperfect tense of the last—was giving (epedidou)—vividly suggests that it is in the very moment of Jesus’ offering the loaf that the disciples’ eyes are opened: their astonishment is powerfully conveyed by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in his painting of the scene (see fig. 3). And he vanished from their sight (24:31b).69 Those in Luke’s audience who were familiar with Israel’s Scriptures would perhaps think of its stories of divine revelation and departure—to Abraham (Gen 17:22), to Jacob (Gen 35:13), to Gideon (Judg 6:21), to Samson’s parents (Judg 13:20), to Tobit and Tobias

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(Tob 12:20–21), or to Heliodorus (2 Macc 3:34). Those familiar with the literature of Hellenism would perhaps find resonances with pagan stories of divine revelation and departure—in solemn vein, the conclusion of Apollo’s words to Aeneas in the Aeneid when, “While he was speaking / Apollo left the sight of men and vanished into thin air” (9.656–58; trans. Lombardo),70 or, in lighter mood, the disappearance of Helen as it is described in Euripides’ romantic comedy Helen: “Your wife has gone. Disappeared into thin air. Vanished“ (Helen 606–7, trans. Wilson71). In any case, Luke here shows himself a master of understatement. What he indicates is that already the resurrected Messiah is not bound by the limitations of earthly life as we know it. Already he is entering into his glory. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning (kaiomenē) within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (24:32). Now that their eyes are opened, the disciples understand not just what they were being taught on the road but who was teaching them. Luke’s use of burning to describe intense emotional experience is unique in the New Testament, but hardly difficult to understand or unique in Hellenistic literature generally.72 Danker’s suggestion of an association with the fire that came down at Pentecost (Acts 2:3) may not be entirely fanciful.73 That same hour they got up—the point being, of course, that it had been late even before they went in to supper. Nevertheless, this was too important for them to delay sharing it with their fellow disciples even for a few hours: and so they returned to Jerusalem; and there they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. But now we have a surprise. Cleopas’ and his companion’s big news is upstaged. Not only the women, but now even the eleven already know! They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed!” (24:34a). The Lord (ho kurios) is used absolutely; it is, of course, the Lord Jesus. Then there is another surprise. What we might have expected would be presented as a story in its own right, as it is in the appendix to John, is here virtually backed into the narrative as if it were something incidental. “And,” the eleven and their companions tell them, “he has appeared to Simon!” (24:34b). That is all. Luke offers their report but no description.74 He refers to the appearance because it is important. “This appearance to Simon Peter is the basis on which he will reinforce his brothers (see Luke 22:32); it is the grace given by the risen Christ to the one who will play the leading role in the Christian community depicted in Luke’s second volume,”75 at least to begin with. Nevertheless, once it has been reported—filed by title, we might say—Luke then allows the disciples of the Emmaus road to tell their story. And their narrative, as he presents it, is brief but very vivid: then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in

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the breaking of the bread (24:35). In Luke’s earlier description of what happened we were reminded of the feeding of the multitude and the Last Supper; so here, when for the first time Luke uses the phrase the breaking of the bread (klasis tou artou), which will later be his shorthand for the Eucharist (Acts 2:42, 46; 20:7, 11; 24:30; 27:35), Luke’s hearers are surely to have in mind the Christian cult and their continuing encounter with the risen Christ thereby.76 It is no accident that this phrase—he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread—has resonated with Christians down the centuries as a description of the Eucharistic experience. While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them (24:36a). The risen Jesus in Luke is bound by no limitations of space or place; he comes and goes as he will. And said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’77 They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a spirit.78 He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet;79 see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”80 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.81 While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence (24:36b–43). Commentators have understandably drawn attention to the apologetic—even polemic—element that marks this entire passage. Luke seems to go to quite extraordinary lengths to establish not merely the presence of the real Jesus whom they had known before (see that it is I myself), but the reality of his physical presence, marked not only by the invitation to touch him but by his insistence on sharing food with them.82 Perhaps, as David Catchpole has suggested, some were regarding the presence of the risen Jesus as merely the manifestation of an angel rather than resurrection; it was, particularly among the evangelist’s contemporaries, an accepted feature of angels that they did not eat (Tob 12:19; Philo, On Abraham 115–18 [giving a corrective spin to Gen 18:8]; T. Ab. 4:9).83 This would certainly explain the extraordinary vigor with which Luke now insists on the risen Jesus’ eating in the disciples’ presence as well as on the overall physicality of his presence. Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,84 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations. Beginning85 from Jerusalem, you are witnesses of these things” (24:44–48). Clearly there is some repetition here of what has already been said to Cleopas

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and his companion. But the whole goes much further. Cleopas and his companion needed reassurance that the suffering of the Messiah before his entry into glory was to be expected. The disciples must now learn, however, that not only the suffering and resurrection of the Messiah, but also the entire mission of the people of God, proclaiming to all nations repentance with a view to the forgiveness of sins are locked together, and that both are “according to the Scriptures.” Here Luke again points us back to the beginning of his narrative, for the forgiveness of sins is what was promised in the proclamation of the Baptizer (3:3, 6) and in Jesus’ teaching at the beginning of his ministry in the synagogue at Nazareth (4:18–30). At the same time, however, Luke also, as Luke Timothy Johnson puts it, “makes the decisive turn towards his second volume,”86 for the story of the preaching of the gospel calling for repentance and offering the forgiveness of sins, beginning from Jerusalem, is precisely the story that the Book of Acts will tell; hence “you are witnesses of these things.” (24:48). To be a witness—“one who affirms or attests”87 to the work of Christ and the mission of the church and thereby gives glory to God—that is a great part of what it means to be the church. But the apostles will not have to bear that witness in their own strength. “And see, I am sending (apostellō) upon you the promise of my Father” (24:49a). Luke’s choice of verb is striking, for the same verb has been used earlier of Jesus’ “sending” his disciples (9:2; 10:1) and even of God’s own “sending” of Jesus (4:43; 9:48, cf. 4:18). The word promise again looks back to the proclamation of the Baptist (3:16) and forward to Acts, where that proclamation will be recalled (Acts 1:4–5). “So stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (24:49b). As the successors of Moses, Elijah, and Elisha received a portion of their spirit, so the disciples of Christ will be empowered. Again, we are simultaneously pointed back, for the power by which Mary conceived was her being overshadowed by “the power of the Most High” (1:34), and we are pointed forward to the empowerment of the disciples at Pentecost (Acts 2:4). Then he led them out as far as Bethany,88 and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them (diestē ap’autōn) and was being carried up into heaven (anephereto eis ton ouranon)89 (24:50–51). The destiny toward which Jesus has been moving from the beginning of the gospel, and especially since 9:51, is now complete. No scene in the other gospels coincides exactly with this. The nearest is in the longer ending of Mark: “So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God” (16:19).90 Nevertheless, even though Luke and pseudo-Mark are the only canonical writers to speak of the ascension in this way, the understanding of the Risen One that they reflect was by no means unique in them. It already lay behind the

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(probably pre-Pauline) hymn at Philippians 2:9–11, in which Christ is raised from the cross to the glory of his exaltation and his inheritance of the Divine Name. It is likewise implicit in the description of the Risen Christ offered by Luke’s contemporary Matthew (Matt 28:18–20). For Luke then, as for Paul and Matthew (and, as we shall see, for John), the risen Christ is not merely risen, for his resurrection is the first stage towards exaltation and divine glory. This exaltation has, however, a profound theological consequence. And they worshipped him,91 and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God (24:52–53). “The disciples did not experience Jesus’ departure as a sorrowful event, but as an occasion for adoration, joy, and worship.”92 For Luke (as, again, for Paul and Matthew) the exaltation of Jesus means that his disciples may and should worship him with the worship that is owed only to God. In the joy of that worship they return to Jerusalem as he commanded and continue in the temple blessing and praising the God of Israel, who has raised up this mighty salvation for them. So Luke’s gospel ends where it began (cf. 1:5–23), in the Temple at Jerusalem. I composed the first (ton prōton93) book, O Theophilus,94 about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when, having given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen, he was taken up (Acts 1:1–2).95 Luke begins his second book with an address to his patron, and a brief summary of the contents of his earlier volume, stressing especially its climax in Jesus’ closing charge to the eleven and their companions and his being taken up from them. He goes on to explicate what had followed Jesus’ passion in a little more detail. To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God (1:3). The disciples are witnesses to the resurrection not because they saw it (no canonical writer attempts to describe the resurrection—that is reserved for the so-called Gospel of Peter, which did not make it into the New Testament) but because the Risen One appeared to them, as the apostolic formula said. The many proofs that Jesus offered may certainly be connected with his eating with them, his allowing his disciples to touch him and see his wounds, and his opening the Scriptures to them, as the gospel recounts (Luke 24:25–27, 39–48). Yet perhaps in Luke’s present summary it is more important than all of this to hear the evangelist’s central assertion, which is that Jesus presented himself alive to them. In other words, their faith in the Risen One was and is essentially the gift and work of the Risen One himself. It was Jesus who revealed himself to them, not they who in some sense “found” or “came to” Jesus. In the course of his revelation, as Luke makes plain, Jesus speaks to the disciples not of some new knowledge or secret wisdom (such as some would later claim was given in conversations after his resurrection96) but simply of the

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gracious truth about which he had always taught them, that is, the kingdom of God. This truth will bracket the Book of Acts, just as it brackets the gospel, for at the end of Luke’s story we shall find Paul in Rome still witnessing, proclaiming nothing other than “the kingdom of God” according to the Scriptures, which of course will still involve “teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 28:23, 30–31). Although the forty days period of Jesus’ appearances to his disciples is familiar to Christians because it has long been enshrined in the calendars of the church, this is actually the only time that it is mentioned in the New Testament.97 Perhaps the idea of a forty-day period of teaching and preparation appealed to Luke because of its resonances with the Israel’s traditions (Exod 34:28; 1 Kgs 19:8) as well as with the traditions of Jesus’ life (Luke 4:1–13).98 Evidently, since the evangelist has just (1:2) referred to his earlier account of the ascension which is not preceded by forty days but appears to take place in the evening on the day of the resurrection, it is the symbolic rather than the historical or evidential nature of the “forty-day” assertion that appeals to him.99 And while eating with them he charged them (sunalizomenos parēggeilen autois100) not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, “which you heard from me,101 for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (1:4–5). So Luke explicitly links the coming gift of the Spirit with the Baptist’s prophecy in the beginning of the gospel (Luke 3:16) and, in confirming Jesus’ command given at Luke 24:46–49, again affirms the pivotal role of Jerusalem in God’s providence. In Luke’s view, whatever terrible things may have happened to Jerusalem since, nothing alters the fact that God’s promise was fulfilled: “For out of Zion will go forth the Law, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Isa 2:3, Mic 4:2). So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (1:6) It seems strange—perhaps even somewhat crass—that after all that has happened, all that they have been taught, Luke should picture the disciples still asking a question that binds the kingdom to the nationalist aspirations of Israel. Yet the war of 66, less than two decades before Luke wrote, was evidence enough that those aspirations had lived on for many, and (though Luke himself could not know this) if at the time when he wrote any doubted that after the catastrophe of 70 such aspirations could still be a live issue, the rebellion of 135 would prove them disastrously wrong. So there was good reason for Luke to raise the question of nationalist hopes at this point in his narrative, and it gave him the opportunity to make clear that Christian understanding of God’s purposes is not bound to such hopes. Indeed, Jesus’ reply goes much further. He said to them, “It is not for you to know

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times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority” (1:7). All human speculations about when and how God will bring the fullness of the kingdom are ruled out. They are, as Gerhard Krodel puts it, “an intrusion on the sovereignty of God.”102 This does not mean (as Paul saw, and explained in Romans 11) that God will not fulfill God’s promises to Israel, but it does mean that God will do so in God’s own way and in God’s own time. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you (1:8). This repeats the promise already given, but it is in this context also a continuing answer to the question about God’s promise to Israel. It affirms that the true restoration of divine sovereignty in the midst of God’s people begins in the power given them by the Holy Spirit, by which power, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth (1:8b). C. K. Barrett calls these last words “programmatic,” and Luke Timothy Johnson says that they provide “a rough outline” of Acts.103 Both are right—to a certain extent. The words point, however, beyond Acts, for Acts merely concludes in Rome, and Rome is not for Luke the end of the earth.104 Rome is the heart of the Empire, to which all roads lead and from which therefore all roads run to the end of the earth.105 It will therefore be enough for Luke to show that, having reached Rome by the end of his book, the gospel evidently will proceed to the end of the earth. Hence the Book of Acts itself will be open ended, for the continuing progress of that gospel will be the work of Luke’s audience. All this will be, moreover, in fulfillment of Scripture, for the phrase to the end of the earth (heōs eschatou tēs gēs) precisely quotes LXX Isaiah 49:6, the verse that spoke of the mission of God’s Servant who was to be “a light to the nations.” Isaiah 49:6 was, moreover, precisely the verse that aged Simeon, inspired by the Spirit, had applied to Jesus at his birth (Luke 2:27, 31). So the people of God who continue this mission are part of the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy about the Servant of the Lord. They participate in the Servant’s labor, and they will receive the fullness of the kingdom in God’s time. That is the real answer to the disciples’ question about God’s restoring “the kingdom to Israel.” And when he said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight (1:9). The distinction in tense between when he said this (eipōn—aorist participle) and as they were looking on (blepontōn— present participle) is precise: in Luke’s view, Jesus’ commission and his promise of the Spirit complete his work upon earth, but the disciple’s witness to Jesus’ exaltation is a continuing task. The assertion that Jesus was lifted up (epērthē; and similarly Luke 24:51 “he was carried up,” anephereto) might be heard as claiming for him a literally physical, upward movement through the heavens, but here again Luke is using the language and imagery of apocalyptic, as is confirmed by his reference to the cloud which, as often, signifies

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the divine presence (compare Exod 24:15–18; Dan 7:13; Luke 9:34; 21:27–28). Again, it seems, Luke expects his audience to understand this, just as he evidently expects them to understand it when Peter uses, at much greater length and much more elaborately, the same kind of language and imagery in his speech at Pentecost—language and imagery which is obviously not intended to be taken literally since, if it were, it would mean that Peter was raving (Acts 2:17–21, citing Joel 3:1–5).106 If Luke had wanted us to credit the real, physical nature of what he was describing, we can scarcely doubt that he would have spelled it out just as, in the appearance narratives, he spells out the physicality of the risen Jesus to the point where he has embarrassed commentators from the fathers onwards: the whole point being, however, that in those narratives Luke does want us to take the physicality seriously. Here, however, there is no such elaboration. In contrast to other ascension narratives, both Jewish and pagan, there is not even the mention of an earthly element such as a storm or whirlwind bearing up the exalted one,107 nor are there other elements of myth, such as horsemen and fiery chariots, nor is there the concern of followers for their master’s fate, such as marked the departure of Elijah (2 Kgs 2:16–17). Instead, we have only the simple divine passive—he was lifted up—and the apocalyptic cloud, the sign of the God’s presence, forming a narrative that Ernst Haenchen understandably characterizes as “almost uncannily austere.”108 The ascension is moreover, as Richard Pervo puts it, “an Easter event.”109 The entire narrative, together with the closely related while they were gazing as he was going into heaven (1:10a),110 is Luke’s way of presenting the basis for the theological claim for Jesus that Peter will make at Pentecost. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens; but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a stool for your feet.’ Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. (Acts 2:33–36) Yet by and in the very act of making this claim, Luke also spells out what the resurrection texts we have so far examined only imply: that the resurrection appearances of Jesus have come to an end. The church’s head has been exalted into heaven, but by that very token he is out of their sight, which means that he is no longer with his own as he was in his ministry and even in his appearances after the resurrection. What then?

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Behold, two men (andres duo) stood by them in white robes—again two men! Luke surely intends us to associate them with the “two men” who were witnesses at the transfiguration and at the tomb (Luke 9:30–31; 24:4), and so to remember that “Moses and all the prophets” witness to all that is here being told and to the promise of what is to come. Of course the two men are still angelic,111 which is to say, they are messengers. And they said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?112 This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (1:10–11). In other words, this new state of things will not be permanent. Jesus will come again. The present “detour” will have an end. Jesus will come, moreover, in the same way as you saw him go, which is to say, in the cloud, the sign of the divine presence, to be the recipient of an “everlasting dominion”—just as the prophet Daniel had promised (Dan 7:13–14).113 Of course the angels (and the evangelist) offer no date for that event, no season that may be calculated. Have not the disciples just been warned against the presumption that a claim to such knowledge would imply (1:7)? Yet the promise is sure, and so they are not to stand looking into heaven—perhaps speculating about when he will come? No, they are simply to hold to the promise.114 In the meantime, there is work to be done! The departure of Moses and Elijah led to the mission of their successors, Joshua and Elisha; so now the ascension of Jesus will lead to outpouring of the Spirit and the mission of his disciples and the church.115 For the moment, however, the disciples must do as they have been told and wait. As for life, no doubt, as Richard Pervo says, “it seems much like life before. After the ascension, the apostles walk back to their lodging—on feet, not clouds—there to engage in worship and prayer. The difference is that believers now walk in hope.”116 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away.117 And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying (ēsan katamenontes118), Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James.119 All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers (1:12–14). Luke is very clear that the faithful women—who ministered to Jesus in Galilee, who followed him to Jerusalem, who witnessed his death, burial, and the empty tomb, and who have borne witness to his resurrection—these have their share in the prayers to which with one accord the group devote themselves, and they will likewise have their share in the gift of the Spirit (cf. Acts

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2:17–18). Striking, finally, is Luke’s choosing to mention at this point Mary, the mother of Jesus. Luke earlier omitted Mark’s arguably negative comments about Jesus’ family (in Mark 3:31–35 and 6:3), so this is his first mention of Mary since the birth and infancy narratives. The point of mentioning her now is surely to make clear that she who manifested trust and obedience at the annunciation trusts and is obedient still.120 In her earlier trust and obedience she bore the Word of God in her own flesh. Now she will be present when the Spirit is given to the church, and tongues of fire will come to rest on each one of them (2:3; cf. 2:17).

8 John

Like the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel according to John has many typical characteristics of a Greco-Roman “life,” and would probably have been perceived by contemporaries as an example of that genre.1 It is written in Greek that has a strong Semitic coloring,2 and it seems to show acquaintance with Palestinian geography (see, e.g., 5:2)3 and oral Torah.4 It claims at certain points to be based upon eyewitness testimony (see 19:35; 21:24). Its basic structure, like that of the Synoptic Gospels, follows the outline of the apostolic preaching, and may be set out as follows: 1:1–1:51—The coming of the Messiah in fulfillment of Scripture. 2:1–11:57—Jesus does mighty works and teaches with authority. 12:1–19:42—Jesus suffers, dies, and is buried. 20:1–21:25—Jesus is raised from the dead, and commissions the church. Many details of the material in John are similar to those in the Synoptics. Thus, Jesus heals the sick (4:46–54), is accused of infringing the Sabbath (5:9–18), debates with religious authorities (8:12–20), gives sight to the blind (9:1–7), and raises the dead (11:1–44). In chapter 6 there is a sequence more or less paralleled in the same order in Mark—feeding the multitude, crossing the lake, a dispute about bread, and a crisis among the disciples at the heart of which there is a confession by Peter.

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There are also striking differences between John and the Synoptic Gospels. Of these the two most obvious are structural: (1) Following the prologue (1:1–18), the first major part of the narrative (1:19–12:50) contains a great deal of polemic, especially about the person of Jesus and his relationship to the Father, and is perhaps intended to arm readers for debate with those outside the community. The second part (13–21)—and in particular the account of the Last Supper (13–17)—deals with questions reflecting more the internal concerns of the church, such as: “How could Christians be sure that Jesus was still with the believers?” and, “In what sense could they be sure that they knew the Father?” Some commentators refer to the former of these parts as “the Book of Signs”5 and the latter as “the Book of Glory.”6 (2) Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, the Fourth Gospel, apart from the passion and resurrection narratives, seems generally to be arranged in blocks or sections, each centered on a particular theological concern. These are not marked by logical progression or analysis of the subject, as might be the case in a scholastic or systematic study. Rather, they are collections of episodes—debates, monologues, and, in most of them, a mighty act of Jesus that could be called a “sign” and, in two cases, is so called (2:11; 4:54). These elements all revolve around the theme in various ways—illustrating it, arguing about it, or meditating on it. So much may be said with reasonable certainty about the Fourth Gospel. Other questions continue to be debated, and two in particular. The first directly involves the text as it has come down to us. As commentators and exegetes have noticed at least from the second century, the Fourth Gospel contains a number of curious anomalies and apparent disjunctures. Thus the transition from chapter 5 (at the end of which Jesus is still in Jerusalem) to chapter 6 (where he immediately goes to “other side of the sea of Galilee,” 6:1) is extraordinarily awkward. The narrative would surely flow better if chapter 4 (wherein Jesus leaves Judaea to go into Galilee [4:1–3] and at the end of the chapter is still there [4:54]) were between 5 and 6—which is exactly where Tatian, evidently having noticed the problem, placed it in his Diatessaron, composed at some time between ca. 150 and ca. 172. The “division” among “the Jews” as to whether one who “has a devil” can “open the eyes of the blind” (10:19–21) would surely make better sense if it immediately followed 9:41 (wherein Jesus has just opened the eyes of a blind man and then made a scathing comment about the Pharisees) than it does in its present position, following a discourse about Jesus the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (10:1–18). Chapters 13–14 and 15–16 seem to contain two different traditions of the last supper discourses that have not been properly combined. To say the least, it is odd that 14:31b

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(“Rise, let us go hence”) should be followed by several more pages of conversation. Most commentators observe that 20:30–31 (“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name”) sounds as if it were meant to be a closing peroration. But then the gospel continues for another chapter.7 Four explanations, not mutually exclusive and sometimes in combination, have at different times been suggested as ways of accounting for all this. One explanation is that the evangelist has combined several originally independent sources and that this has led to the present duplications and oddities of sequence. Various attempts to isolate or identify these sources have been made, but no consensus has emerged, nor does it seem likely that one will.8 A second explanation is that the confusion is a result of textual dislocation at some stage in the gospel’s transmission. In the light of that possibility, various improvements have been suggested. Of these, the most widely accepted has perhaps been that chapter 6 should be placed between chapters 4 and 5, which does seems to improve the geography. It is less clear that it improves the flow of John’s teaching, since the evangelist may well have intended the theme of “bread” in 6 to be followed at once by that of “water” in 7, which would be the same order as in Exodus, where God gives Israel bread from heaven and then water from the rock (Exod 16:1–17:7). And that, unfortunately, has been the trouble with various suggestions that have involved rearrangement or emendation. The proposals often seem to create difficulties as well as mend them, and, again, critics have been unable to reach any level of consensus.9 A third explanation is that an “Ecclesiastical Redactor”10 has been at work on the evangelist’s text, someone who was at once an editor of sorts and a kind of censor librorum who saw it as his task to make John’s narrative more orderly and his theology more acceptable to the church catholic. But the fact is, the gospel overall is marked by a homogeneity of style that seems strongly to indicate a single guiding mind rather than multiple ones, and the case for the Redactor’s theological concern does seem to depend to a considerable extent on the personal choices of an individual commentator as to what may or may not be regarded as truly “Johannine” theology.11 A fourth explanation of the roughness and apparent inconsistencies sees them not as evidence of the use of sources or of dislocation or the work of redactors but rather as “seams” resulting from an editorial process of redrafting and revision out of which, probably over several decades, our present gospel has gradually evolved.12 This, as it seems to me, is much the most fruitful of the approaches I have mentioned, although even here we should concede that there is not (and is not likely to be) any general consensus as to precisely what that

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editorial process entailed. Moreover, even if this scenario is granted (and it is, of course, no more than speculation), it remains that the reviser(s) at every stage must have thought that the document they had produced was sufficiently coherent to be taken seriously as it stood. As far as the final version is concerned (which is the only version we actually know about), granted the existence of the difficulties I have named, we still have overall no very good reason to disagree with them. I respect and believe I have learned much from commentators who work on hypothetical reconstructions of the gospel, and of course we are all perfectly at liberty to offer commentary on any documents we choose, including hypothetical ones. I prefer personally to work on the canonical gospel as a whole, as it is witnessed in the best textual tradition that we can find. That is simply because, as I have said, this is the only gospel that we actually know about, and in commenting on it I am at least reasonably sure I am working with material that the evangelist or his school or community regarded, at least at one time in their history, as representing what they wanted to say. The second great unresolved question concerns the identity of the fourth evangelist. Who was he? What can we know about him? Irenaeus, writing about 180, said, “John, the disciple of the Lord who reclined on his bosom, published his gospel while staying at Ephesus in Asia” (Against Heresies 3.1.1; compare Eusebius, HE 3.1.1–2). Irenaeus appealed to the memory of Polycarp (who died ca. 155), saying that as a boy he had heard Polycarp describe his “conversation with John and with others who had seen the Lord” (see Eusebius, HE 5.20.4–8).13 Many commentators have supposed that by “John the disciple” Irenaeus and other early witnesses meant one of the Twelve, namely, John the son of Zebedee. Some obvious characteristics of the gospel that we noted earlier, such as its somewhat “Semitic” Greek and the knowledge displayed at times of Palestinian geography, would fit quite well with such a theory or else with the gospel’s being the work of a school that had been founded by that disciple, so that John son of Zebedee would be “the authority behind the Johannine tradition (and in that broad sense the author of the community’s tradition) without being the writer of the gospel” (so Raymond Brown).14 John the son of Zebedee seems, moreover, rather well qualified to be identified with the Fourth Gospel’s “beloved disciple” (13:23–26; 19:25–27; 20:2–10; 21:7, 20–23) who is, in particular, spoken of as the eyewitness source of the resurrection narrative at 21:24. Not surprisingly, therefore, many have sympathized with William Temple’s judgment: “I regard as self-condemned any theory which fails to find a very close connection between the gospel and John the son of Zebedee.”15 Yet there are difficulties in associating the genesis of the Fourth Gospel with John the disciple. The most obvious of these is that the claim is comparatively late. Ignatius of Antioch, writing about 112 to the church at

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Ephesus, does not mention John or his gospel, though he mentions Paul. In fact, before Irenaeus there is no evidence at all to connect John with either Ephesus or a gospel. Many modern commentators suggest, therefore, that Irenaeus was influenced in his claims not so much by what he knew as by a need to authenticate the Johannine tradition so as to rescue it from the speculations of Gnostics who seem to have been the first to find the Fourth Gospel congenial to them.16 Although we cannot name the fourth evangelist with certainty, that does not mean that we can say nothing about him. The style and thinking of the Fourth Gospel are, as has often been said, marked by a tendency toward a certain kind of dualism. “The world” is opposed to what is “not of the world,” light is opposed to darkness, ascent to descent, truth to lies, life to death, and children of the heavenly Father to children of the devil—these are merely among the most obvious oppositions.17 Just such a dualism as this is also a notable feature of the Qumran literature, which regularly presents pictures of a cosmic warfare between light and darkness, truth and falsehood. Like the faithful in John’s gospel, the faithful of Qumran see themselves as “sons of light” and “men of the lot of God” over against the rest of humanity who are “sons of darkness” and “men of the lot of Satan” (Community Rule, 1QS 1:10–15; 2:1–5). “All the children of righteousness are ruled by the Prince of Light and walk in the ways of Light, but all the children of unrighteousness are ruled by the Angel of Darkness and walk in the ways of darkness,” says the Community Rule (1QS 3:20–25)—and the passage could almost be a quotation from the Fourth Gospel (compare, for example, John 3:19–21; 8:44). The dualism of the Qumran literature is, moreover, like that of John, bound up with an ethic that is fundamentally Jewish. Being “sons of light” is linked to a duty to “love all the sons of light” and “to obey all [God’s] commandments” (1QS 1:15–20, compare John 3:20–21; 15:10–12, 17). To live in such a way is to “do the truth” (Hebrew, ‘asah ’emet; Greek, poiein aletheian; 1QS 1:5; 5:3; 8:9; cf. John 3:21; cf. LXX Esa [MT Isa] 26:10; Tob 4:6; 13:6). In the light of all this, an increasing number of scholars now acknowledge the near certainty that the community represented by the Qumran literature—by which, according to fairly general (though not universal) scholarly consensus, we mean, “the Essenes”18—was a major influence on the fourth evangelist, and that this influence is manifested in his presentation of Jesus’ teaching and in the dualism of the gospel generally.19 Hence there is great deal to be said for a suggestion made some years ago by Raymond Brown, that we should see the fourth evangelist’s background and education as involving Qumran.20 For what it is worth, such a view also accords quite well with what many see as the Fourth Gospel’s own hint as to the origins of its author in the Baptist’s community (1:35–37).21 As has often been observed, almost everything

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we know of the life and teaching of the Baptist resonates with something that we know of the life and teaching of Qumran.22 In Brown’s words, “almost every detail of his life and preaching has a possible Qumrân affinity.” From this it would seem likely that the Baptist, before his contact with Christ, was in relationship with Qumrân or other Essenes (perhaps he was raised by the community, or in contact with the community, or the head of a quasi-Essene group). If this is true, and if John the Evangelist was his disciple, we can explain very well the Qumrân impact on the Fourth Gospel.23 Taking all these issues together, I incline personally to think that the original “fourth evangelist” (whether or not his name was “John”) really was a disciple of the Baptist, somewhat influenced by the thinking of Qumran, who subsequently became a disciple of Jesus and finally founded a Johannine community or “school of interpretation” upon which, until his death (referred to indirectly at 21:23), he had a direct and continuing influence. Together he and his school were responsible for our fourth gospel, a gospel which as it now stands is, however, the result of gradual evolution and reflection, drafting, redrafting, and revision over several decades.24 Both parties to this enterprise are, I believe, referents in the last verse but one of the present text (21:24), written at the time when the evangelist was either known to be dying or had just died. This verse speaks of three things: (1) of the evangelist himself, that is, the disciple “who is bearing witness to these things, and who wrote (grapsas25) these things (tauta)”; (2) of the school that he had founded, that is, the “we” who “know that his testimony is true”; and, of course, (3) of “these things (tauta),” that is, what the disciple had written. The precise extent of this last—in other words, what exactly is to be included under tauta—is not entirely clear, but in view of 20:31, which the writer of 21:24 obviously knew and seems likely to have had in mind as he wrote, the most probable intended sense is that tauta refers more or less to whole gospel, as it appears to do at 20:31. How then shall we see the relationship between the evangelist and those who speak at 21:24 (and, by implication, at 19:35)? Perhaps, at the end of a long relationship, it was no longer possible even for those who had participated in it to know precisely the answer to that question. If an answer is to be found, it is, I suspect, somewhat along the lines of the relationship that will have functioned between Paul and the various individual disciples whom he names as “cosenders” at the beginning of 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon, as well as “the brethren” mentioned in the beginning of Galatians. We have no reason to suppose that such naming was simply a courtesy. We need not doubt that Paul will have talked with his disci-

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ples and “cosenders” and even modified his views or otherwise learned from them. Yet they are “cosenders,” not “coauthors.” There is evidently only one major composing intellect behind the letters, an “author” in every normal sense of that word, and it is Paul. I conceive a similar, although obviously much longer and therefore more involved and evolving, relationship between the beloved disciple and his school. Of course he will, over the years, have talked with them and learned from them, and the ideas and opinions of all will have grown and deepened together. Yet we need not doubt that when his disciples said that he was the one who “wrote” these things, this, too, was not simply a courtesy. Certainly, our present text here and there betrays a touch more independence of him than Paul’s cosenders ever reveal (for example at 19:35 and in ch. 21, and possibly elsewhere where he is referred to as “beloved”). It seems quite likely (even highly likely) that he used a source or sources, adapting them for his own purposes, and that he made use of an already existing hymn for the prologue. It is (I would argue) quite certain that his disciples drafted chapter 21 as an epilogue to the whole. But still the fourth evangelist’s school surely knew who, essentially, was the composing intellect behind their gospel. When therefore they said that he “wrote these things,” they meant it.26 As for what went on in that process, perhaps Robert Browning’s imaginative creation was not so very far wrong. Here the poet has the evangelist speak in the first person: Since much that at the first, in deed and word, Lay simply and sufficiently exposed, Had grown, or else my soul was grown to match, Fed through such years, familiar with such light, Guarded and guided still to see and speak Of new significance and fresh result; What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars, And named them in the Gospel I have writ. (“A Death in the Desert,” 168–57) Such a role as I see for the original fourth evangelist would, I believe, square quite well with the narrative role of the one who in the gospel is referred to at times (out of his modesty?) as merely the “other disciple” (e.g., 18:15; 20:2) and at others (out of his community’s pride in himē) as “beloved” by Jesus (e.g., 13:23; 19:26; 21:7, 20). The role of this disciple in John is somewhat akin to that of Peter in the Gospel of Matthew – but with this difference, that even in retrospect, Peter in Matthew is in many respects the typical or representative disciple both in his failures and his successes, his weaknesses and his strengths, whereas the beloved disciple in John has evolved into the ideal disciple.27

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This does not mean, however, that the beloved disciple is merely a symbol, with no connection to any real figure, any more than that is the case with Peter in Matthew’s gospel. A figure revered—even revered with a degree of romanticism or as something of an icon—is not therefore a figure with no basis in reality. Especially sensible in this connection are the comments of Brown, who found “particularly weak the contention that because the Beloved Disciple is left anonymous in the Fourth Gospel he is not likely to have been a historical figure and even less likely to have been persuasive as a witness, since anonymous testimony is rarely acceptable.” Brown points to an analogy that may be seen in this respect between the Fourth Gospel’s attitude to the beloved disciple and the attitude of the Qumran community to the Teacher of Righteousness. There can be no doubt that, for all his anonymity in the community’s writings, the Teacher of Righteousness was a real person who had interpreted the Scriptures and was deeply revered. The fact that he is known by a title rather than by a personal name gives emphasis to the fact that he had an appointed role in God’s plan. The consequent symbolic value that the Teacher assumes in the community’s thought, especially after his death, casts no real doubt on the historicity of the part he played in building up that community. There is every reason to presume that both for the Qumran and Johannine communities the anonymity of their respective heroes is only literary and symbolic—the people within the two communities knew perfectly well the identity of their heroes.28 All that said, in what follows I shall refer to the evangelist as John, first, for convenience, and second, because it is the only guess we have that is even remotely feasible and—who knows?—even with its difficulties, it might just be right. As for when all this happened, dates well into the second century have been proposed.29 Raymond Brown settled on “ca. 100 for the final redaction of the Gospel,” together with an editorial and revision process that he envisioned beginning “somewhere between 70 and 85”—dates which were, he admitted, “very much a guess.”30 Like the name “John” it seems, however, to be as good a guess as any.

John’s Account of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Like the Synoptics, John maintains the apostolic pattern: Jesus died, Jesus was buried, Jesus has been raised, and Jesus appeared. That is as much the climax of the Fourth Gospel as it now stands as it is of Paul’s tradition and of Mark’s,

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Mathew’s, and Luke’s narratives. At the same time, in his presentation of these things—and particularly the crucifixion—John’s emphasis is different from that of the Synoptics. Perhaps it is overstatement to suggest, as has Ernst Käsemann, that in John the passion narrative is really only about Christ’s glory.31 Perhaps it is even overstatement to assert, as does John Ashton, that the word “passion” is a “misnomer” in the Fourth Gospel, since Jesus “orchestrates the whole performance.”32 The story of a crucifixion is, after all, the story of a crucifixion, that is, an agonizing and horrible execution. No doubt that was entirely evident to those who heard the gospel toward the end of the first century, when crucifixion was a vivid and present social reality, and no doubt that was especially the case when those who heard were members of a minority group that might at any time find itself the victim of social prejudice and the violence that could follow from it. If, moreover, from the evangelist’s point of view the death of Christ were merely a revelatory walk in the park, where would be the love “greater” than any other (15:13) that is claimed for it? When with the words, “Behold the man!” (19:5) Pilate presents Jesus scourged and crowned with thorns, there is a moment of pathos as powerful as any in the Synoptics—as is illustrated by the fact that it is a moment that has appealed to countless artists, from the agonized vision of Hieronymus Bosch (fig. 4) to the slightly stagey classicism of Antonio Ciseri (fig. 5)33—and it is a moment that is uniquely Johannine. Yet all that said, it cannot be denied that Käsemann and Ashton point to real elements in the Johannine presentation of Jesus’ death. Overall, John does indeed place somewhat less emphasis than do the Synoptics on the suffering in Jesus’ crucifixion. And he does that, surely, in order to place more emphasis on something else. Throughout John’s gospel, unambiguously and even primarily, Jesus’ crucifixion is his “departure” to the Father (7:33–34; 8:21–22; 13:33–36; 14:4–5).34 In his crucifixion, the Father glorifies him and he glorifies his Father (17:1–5, cf. 7.39; 11:4; 12:16; 13:31–32; 14:13). It is a stage in his exaltation (3:14; 8:28; 12:32–34). It is, indeed, his hour (17:1; cf. 2:4; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23). Hence John’s Jesus does not, as in the Synoptics, pray to be freed from the cup that faces him and then, nevertheless, resign himself to his Father’s will (Mark 14:36; Matt 26:39; Luke 22:42); rather, he considers whether he shall make such a prayer and decides against it (12:27–28; cf. 18.11). And so his final word from the cross is not the cry of dereliction, as in Matthew and Mark (Mark 15:34; Matt 27:46), nor the gentle resignation of the Torah scholar who lays him down to rest, as in Luke (23:46), but a cry of victory: “It is completed!” (John 19:30). This being so, the resurrection is in one sense simply a continuation of that exaltation. Already, even as Mary Magdalene embraces him in the garden, Jesus is ascending to the Father (20:17). Much of John’s presentation of the

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Risen One is unique to him. His account of Jesus’ conversation with Mary Magdalene, the encounter with Thomas, and the meeting with the disciples on the beach are unforgettable narratives that have no real parallels elsewhere in the tradition. Yet in all of them John, like the other evangelists, continues to insist that Jesus’ resurrection is physically real in the most obvious sense of that expression, and that it involves a transformed physicality that will finally ascend to the Father. But we anticipate.

that Christ died But standing near (para35) the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene (19:25). For John, as for the other evangelists, the witness of the women is important; that said, aside from Mary Magdalene exactly how the women named by John relate to the women named by the other evangelists is not clear, and even the number of women involved (two, three, or four are all grammatically possible36) is uncertain. What is clear is that John, alone of the evangelists, has added to the poignancy of the scene by speaking of the presence of Jesus’ mother (19:25)—an element that has particularly appealed to Christian devotion, as is witnessed to by many hymns (most notably the Stabat mater37) and by countless paintings and sculptures, such as Bernaert van Orley’s Altarpiece, where she is shown kneeling near to the cross, supported by the other faithful women (see fig. 6). In John’s narrative as a whole, the mother of Jesus has not appeared since the scene at Cana at the beginning of the gospel where, as has often been observed, she showed herself the model of discipleship (“Whatsoever he says to you, do it!”).38 Here she says nothing. She is simply present. Yet perhaps it is precisely her silence before the cross that has enabled so many to identify with her—and especially, no doubt, mothers who have seen their children abused or oppressed. So, surely, we may hear countless African American mothers in the simple, poignant words with which James Weldon Johnson speaks of Mary’s sorrow: Mary, Weeping Mary, Sees her poor little Jesus on the cross. Mary, Weeping Mary, Sees her sweet, baby Jesus on the cruel cross, Hanging between two thieves. (“The Crucifixion”39)

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When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near (19:26a)—John alone claims unambiguously that one at least of the male disciples was faithful enough to follow Jesus to the cross, that is, the disciple whom Jesus loved (although Luke, as we saw, just about allows for the possibility).40 So then, John tells us, Jesus said to his mother, “Woman,41 behold (ide) your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” (19:26b–27a). Jesus’ human concern at this point for his mother’s well-being, his “filial piety,” has been noted by many commentators, including Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and B. F. Westcott,42 and we will be wise not to deny the humanity here displayed by the Johannine Christ, any more than we would deny it of him weeping at the tomb of Lazarus or being troubled in spirit because he knows that he is to be betrayed. On the other hand, of course John does not write without theological significance. The word, behold (ide) at once indicates that this is to be a revelatory moment.43 At and by the cross Jesus establishes a new family, a household of faith, in which his mother’s maternal role is clear. Mary, mother of the Lord, becomes mother of the faithful disciple; the faithful disciple has Mary for his mother.44 And from that hour (ap’ekeinēs tēs hōras) the disciple took her to his own home (eis ta idia45) (19:27b). The words need not, of course, be understood literally;46 the point is that the beloved disciple at once accepted and began to fulfill the obligations of his new position. If we wished further assurance of the significance of this moment, the evangelist’s careful choice of expressions should surely convey it. This hour is Jesus’ hour, the hour for which the entire narrative has prepared us (cf. 2:4; 17:1). After this Jesus, having known that all was now completed (tetelestai) (19:28a); the somewhat awkward phrase Jesus, having known performs some of the functions of Jesus’ predictions in the Synoptics. Jesus’ knowledge is from the Father. The passion narrative began with Jesus “having known” that his “hour” had come (13:1). And now, when that “hour” is completed—that is, “brought to consummation,” “accomplished”47—Jesus’ having known reminds us that he, in laying down his life in obedience to his Father’s command (10:17–18), is in control, however much things may appear to the contrary. Jesus said, so the Scripture might be completed (teleiōthē[i]), “I thirst” (19:28b). John allows us—albeit noting the fulfillment of Scripture—to hear Jesus call out in the final agony of thirst. But which Scripture is to be fulfilled? Perhaps John, like Mark, is thinking of Ps 22, but of a different verse from that quoted in Mark, namely, “my mouth is dried out like a potsherd, my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth” (Ps 22:15).48 Or perhaps, like Luke (Luke 24:27), he is really thinking of the whole of Scripture; it is the total revelation of God that finds fulfillment in the divine self-offering upon Calvary.

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A jar full of sour wine stood there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on hyssop and held it to his mouth (19:29). Despite what many commentators have made of this episode there is nothing in John’s narrative to indicate either mockery or cruelty. Sour wine (oxos) was the ordinary drink of soldiers. It was certainly thirst quenching.49 The most natural implication of John’s mention of the jar is that the soldiers had brought it with them for their own use during the watch, and that it was they, therefore, who in pity gave a drink to the crucified.50 It surely fitted John’s sense of irony that, just as earlier in the story it had been one “altogether born in sins” who nonetheless grasped who Jesus was (10:34), so now, at the last, he is treated to a gesture of compassion from the very last persons of whom it might have been expected. When Jesus had received the sour wine (19:30a)—John alone of the evangelists has Jesus accept the ministration of cheap wine offered by the soldiers, further reinforcing our impression that it is meant in kindness, not mockery— he said, “It is completed (tetelestai)!” (19:30b). This, according to John, is Jesus’ last word. Mark and Matthew presented Jesus’ sense of being forsaken by citing his final quotation of Ps 22:1; Luke indicated his unshaken trust in God by his citation of Ps 31:6; John, however, suggests his sense of a “mission accomplished.” The Scripture has been completed—that is, “fulfilled”—and Jesus has completed the work that the Father sent him to do. “The last suffering for sin had been endured. The ‘end’ of all had been gained. Nothing was left undone or unborne” (Westcott).51 Jesus’ death will therefore be his voluntary decision. Now more than ever, he may say, “I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (10:17b–18), an impression which is only confirmed by the striking expressions that John now uses to speak of Jesus’ dying: and he bowed his head, as one who voluntarily prepares to sleep, and handed over the spirit (paredōken to pneuma),52 as one who willingly surrenders his life to the One who sent him, that is, to his Father, who always loves the Son and has from the beginning given all things into his hand (3:35).53 Since it was the day of Preparation (19:31a)—this is John’s second mention of the day of Jesus’ passion as “the Preparation,” although the motive seems to be different; in the former his concern was to make the point that it was “the Preparation of the Passover”—that is, by implication, the time when they begin the slaughter of the Passover lambs (19:14)—now he seems more concerned with it as a motive for speed in connection with the removal of Jesus’ body: in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away (19:31b). It was, as we have seen, contrary to Jewish practice to leave a body hanging overnight on any day, but

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John, like the Gospel of Peter and—implicitly—even Mark, especially makes the point that it is a major festival.54 There is perhaps in the fourth evangelist an intended parallel between the request to Pilate before Jesus’ death, namely, that he alter the title over Jesus’ cross, and the request now, namely, that he break the victim’s legs. Both requests betray hostility,55 and both are frustrated, the former by Pilate’s refusal and the latter by events. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him; but when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs (19:32–33). But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear,56 and at once there came out blood and water (19:34). In view of the extent to which the fourth evangelist has already drawn our attention to life-giving water (4:14; 7:37–38) and blood which is “drink indeed” (6:55), commentators not unreasonably propose that we are to see in this blood and water a “sign” of the “life” that flows from the crucified for his family. “Though dead, dead in regard of our mortal life, the Lord yet lived; and as he hung upon the cross He was shown openly to be the source of a double cleansing and vivifying power, which followed from his death and life” (Westcott).57 Yet surprisingly enough this is not the aspect of things to which the text immediately draws our attention. Quite the contrary! At precisely the point where we look for a word from prophecy or some other indication as to how we are to understand what we have heard, at precisely this point another voice enters the narrative and in an unexpected parenthesis dares us to challenge the truth of the evangelist’s record. (He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth—that you also may continue to have faith.)58 (19:35). Certainly this is a key moment in the apostolic testimony. It is being said that the one of whom it will be later said “He lives” is the one who truly died. And it is at this point that the evangelist’s school (as I take it) takes upon itself to interrupt the narrative in order to point out that we are hearing the testimony of an eyewitness to the events described, and that he knows that he is testifying correctly. In other words, the one who bears the witness of the gospel (and who, as the members of the school will testify in their epilogue, has “written these things” [21:24]) is not to be doubted. They also choose this moment to remind their hearers why this story is being told at all: it is for the sake of coming generations of believers, for the sake of the church, that you also may continue to have faith.59 Only then does the evangelist’s narrative go on to say what we would (in view of all that has gone before) have expected of it: that the actual events that led to the flow of blood and water—the soldiers’ failure to break Jesus’ bones and the piercing of his side—were each in fulfillment of Scripture.

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For these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled, “A bone of him/it (autou) shall not be broken” (19:36). The obvious texts to bear in mind here are those speaking of the paschal lamb (Exod 12:10; Num 9:12)—an allusion that, in view of allusions associating Jesus with the Paschal Lamb that we have already noticed (18:28; 19:14, 2960), makes perfect sense. In the background also, however, may be the righteous sufferer of Ps 34:21: “He [the Lord] will keep safe all his bones; not one of them shall be broken.” This would fit particularly well with the evangelist’s sense that the design of the priests, even in this matter, has been frustrated by God.61 And again another scripture says, “They shall look on him whom they have pierced” (19:37). The obvious referent here is Zechariah 12:10: “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.” The passage poses many difficult questions for the exegete, yet at least we can say with certainty that as it stands it is a text of grace: its central message is that repentance is God’s gift and the work of God’s Spirit.62 So it is perceived by the fourth evangelist. It comes to those who might least have expected it or prepared for it. The pagan soldier who has pierced the crucified and now looks at him is seen at this moment as representing all those who will receive God’s grace, unmerited and undesired, through Jesus. So, in his own way, he provides for John’s audience a parallel witness to that offered by the centurion at the cross in the synoptic evangelists.

. . . and that he was buried . . . After this Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him leave (19:38). John is at one with the other evangelists in supposing that it was Joseph of Arimathea who went to Pilate to beg the body of Jesus.63 Like Matthew and Luke, he says nothing about Pilate’s doubts as to whether Jesus was dead (although one might argue that his narrative in 19:32–34 covered some of the same ground) and moves straight to Pilate’s permission. Like Matthew, he claims that Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, even though secretly—John has already mentioned other persons of consequence who are “secret” disciples (12:42), so in his narrative this is not unique. So he came and took away his body. Although there has been and is no further mention of Jesus’ mother in John’s passion narrative, her presence at an earlier point (19:26–27) has been seen as giving us leave to suppose that she

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was still present following his death, and therefore that she was involved when Joseph took away his body. This in turn has given rise to the tradition of Mary with the body of her son, and so to the rich vein of devotional art and literature that has flowed from this. We have only to spend a few moments contemplating Michelangelo’s Pietà to be grateful that it is so (see fig. 7). Nicodemus also, who had at first come to him by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds’ weight (19:39). Possibly John intends to imply that Nicodemus, too, was by now a “secret disciple” (cf. 3:1; 7:50), yet it is notable that he does not actually say that. “Smyrna” or “myrrh” was a fragrant resin used in embalming; aloe is aromatic sandalwood used for perfuming cloth but not generally associated with burial. The amount—a hundred Roman pounds, which would be equivalent to about 34 kilograms—is obviously extravagant although, as commentators point out, John does elsewhere show a taste for large numbers (2:6–10; 21:11). In the present instance, the purpose is obviously to show Jesus’ body’s receiving as much honor as possible. They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths (othonia64) with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there (19:40–42). For all John’s evident desire to see the body of Jesus not dishonored, still, as we noted earlier, this remains what was probably a “burial in shame.” Jesus is neither mourned nor laid in a family tomb.65

. . . and that (hoti) “he has been raised” . . . Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw (blepei66) that the stone has been taken away from the tomb (20:1). In agreement with Mark and Luke and in contrast to Matthew, by early, while it was still dark, John seems to mean dawn on Sunday morning, not “early” in a day, i.e., in the evening, as it would be by Jewish reckoning. Like Luke, John here mentions the stone although he has not mentioned it earlier— an indication that he, like Luke, was probably working with older material. So (oun) she ran, and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved (20:2a). Although John does not narrate it, the word so (oun) surely implies that Mary had at least peered into the tomb before she ran to the disciples. That we are to suppose she merely surmised the body was missing without bothering to look seems less likely. That she peered in again later (20:11) hardly tells against the notion that she had looked before. In the logic of John’s narrative Mary’s going to Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved makes sense, because they are the two who have

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already played some role in the passion, on occasion acting together (18:15–18). While John has previously mentioned both the other disciple (18:15) and the disciple whom Jesus loved (13:23–26; 19:26–27), this is the first time that he has explicitly identified them with each other. Having come to Peter and the beloved disciple, Mary said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we67 do not know where they have laid him” (20:2b). It is, as Brown points out, useless to speculate as who they are, who might have taken Jesus’ body out of the tomb, although we note that grave robbing was a not uncommon crime at this time, as is witnessed by an imperial edict from some time in the first half of the first century.68 Peter then came out with the other disciple, and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first; and stooping to look in, he saw (blepei69) the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following (akolouthoun) him, and went into the tomb (21:3–6a). The word following (akolouthoun) is generally significant in John: for example, “they followed Jesus” at 1:37 is enough to indicate that John’s two disciples have turned to Jesus. So C. K. Barrett may be right in his suggestion that the word here implies that in some respects Peter is less than the beloved disciple, even though overall the gospel still maintains the tradition of Peter’s leadership among the Twelve.70 “Naturally the Beloved Disciple outdistances Peter—he loves Jesus more” (Raymond Brown).71 And he saw (theōrei72) the linen cloths lying, and the piece of cloth which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself (20:6b–7). The emphasis on the careful arrangement of the grave clothes perhaps has an apologetic concern, implicitly ruling out any possibility that the grave had been robbed—in other words, ruling out what one might naturally have inferred from 20:2. As Chrysostom pointed out, “a robber would not have been such a fool as to take so much trouble over a superfluous matter.”73 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw (eiden74) and believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead (20:8–9). Interpreters have sharply disagreed about the intention of this passage. Augustine and other church fathers saw 20:8 as asserting no more than that the beloved disciple accepted what Mary Magdalene had told them.75 But this seems rather trite as an explanation of the absolute use of the word believed.76 So other commentators have seen in the assertion that the beloved disciple believed a claim that merely by seeing the empty tomb he came to believe in Jesus’ resurrection, for which faith he needed neither resurrection appearances nor the testimony of the Scriptures.77 The problem with this is that he does not seem then to have shared his faith with anyone, for there no mention of it elsewhere in John’s narrative, and in the following phrase,

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moreover, the plural verb seems to include him with Peter as one who as yet did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.78 Westcott proposes an intermediate position. We should take the word believed seriously, seeing it as pointing at least “to the calm patient acceptance of a mystery as yet in part inexplicable, with full confidence in the divine love.” That granted, we may then concede that the evangelist nonetheless intends “a sharp contrast” between such belief and the fuller knowledge (compare 6:69) that can come from understanding the Scriptures. If the apostles had really entered into the meaning of the Scriptures they would have known that the Life, the Resurrection of Christ, was a divine necessity for which death was a condition.”79 Perhaps that is the best that can be done. It would be idle to deny that the passage as it stands is confusing.80 Then the disciples went back home (21:10). This is not to be understood as an affirmation that they immediately went back to Galilee but rather that they returned to wherever they where staying, which was, presumably, wherever Mary Magdalene had found them. In any case, Brown is surely correct: “the real purpose of this verse is to get the disciples off the scene and give the stage to Magdalene.”81

and that (hoti) “he appeared 1. the appearance to mary magdalene. But Mary had stood82 beside the tomb, outside,83 weeping (20:11a). As with the other canonical accounts of Jesus’ burial, we are not to understand this behavior as formal “mourning” for the deceased.84 Mary, as she will explain in a moment, is weeping because she believes that the body of Jesus has been stolen. Even as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb; and she observed (theōrei85) two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet (20:11a–12). Two angels!—here at last is a sign that everything that is happening is not entirely in the hands of power brokers like Caiaphas and Pilate, nor is it even in the feeble if well-meaning hands of Peter and the beloved disciple. God is at work! What John means us to understand by his careful positioning of the angels has provoked much speculation. The immediately obvious iconic parallel is surely, as B. F. Westcott pointed out, the scriptural accounts of the cherubim who flanked the mercy seat (MT kapporeth / LXX hilastērion), wherein Moses was instructed to “make one cherub at the one end, and one at the other” (Exod 25:17–22)—a parallel image so striking that it seems hard to suppose that the fourth evangelist did not intend it.86 What, then, was the mercy seat? Its Hebrew name derived directly from kipper, meaning “to cover,” and it referred in particular to the “covering” of Israel’s guilt and sin. The mercy seat was given

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by God to Israel as a place and means of atonement whereby Israel’s sin was “regularly and effectively overcome, both to make Yahweh’s presence possible in Israel and to make communion between Yahweh and Israel possible.”87 This astonishing claim is, of course, precisely what the early church claimed for Jesus, whom Paul described as a true “place of atonement” (or even “mercy seat,” hilasterion88) “set forth” by God on the basis of the divine faithfulness, and sanctified with the blood of Jesus (Rom 3:25). What then was it that the angels of the mercy seat in the temple at Jerusalem actually flanked? Strictly speaking, they flanked nothing: the Holy of Holies was empty (fig. 8). There was no image between the Cherubim in the holy space wherein descended the glory of the Lord (2 Kgs 8) because the God of Israel cannot be “imaged.”89 So, too, the angels in John’s story of the tomb flank nothing, which is to say, they flank the place where the body of Jesus had laid, the place where God has acted—the God of Israel who cannot be “imaged.” It is perhaps in line with the fact that they flank this “nothing” that, unlike the angels at the tomb in the Synoptics, John’s angels do not offer comment, information, or instruction. They only ask a question. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” (20:13a). That question Mary can answer, for it is about the “nothing” that she sees. She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him” (20:13b). Many commentators have noted that Mary does not manifest the holy dread that normally accompanies the presence of heavenly messengers. That may be, as Rudolf Schnackenburg suggested, because at this point John is more interested in the angels as witnesses, as framing the empty space that leads to the question, than he is in angelophany.90 Be that as it may, faced with the nothing that is between the angels, and their question, Mary speaks of loss. Indeed, she almost repeats what she said earlier to Peter and the beloved disciple, but there are two significant changes. She now says that they have taken away my lord (as opposed to the Lord) and she says I do not know where they have taken him (as opposed to “we do not know”). Previously she spoke of the loss as general. Now she speaks of it as her loss and as personal.91 And that is the end of the episode. Presumably, it was the conclusion that the evangelist wanted. The empty space between the Cherubim in itself tells Mary nothing and solves nothing, but attention to it enables her to cry out upon her loss, and that too is a gift of grace, for it will lead to grace, as the poet Francis Thompson saw: But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry—and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder

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Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. (Francis Thompson, The Kingdom of God) To Mary’s cry there will be a response, something even greater than the traffic of Jacob’s ladder.92 Looked at from another viewpoint, her loss is the negative of her desire; and her desire shows who and what she is becoming. Saying this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus (20:14). While we are perfectly at liberty, if we will, to attribute Mary’s initial failure to recognize Jesus to her emotional state, or to her expectations being for nothing of the kind, or even to factors so mundane as poor light or that she was not looking directly at him, still we should note that a common feature of the risen Jesus’ appearances in nearly all strands of tradition is, as C. H. Dodd pointed out, that recognition of the Risen One is by no means immediate, which is to say, the disciples initially fail to recognize him, then he offers a salutation or acts in a way familiar to them, and finally they realize who he is.93 Jesus said to her “Woman,94 why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” (20:15a). He asks her the same question as she was asked by the angels. This time she makes no direct response. Instead, supposing him to be the gardener95—evidently, then, the fourth evangelist imagines nothing extraordinary about Jesus’ appearance—she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away” (20:15b). Her address is courteous and seems to envisage removal with no evil intent,96 though still she does not see who is before her. Jesus said to her, “Mary”97 (20:16a). The shepherd calls his own sheep by name and the sheep know his voice. I am the good shepherd. Mary was not able to recognize or image the Risen One, but the Risen One can call her and reveal himself to her—and does. To put it another way, the witnesses—in this case, the empty tomb—can bear their witness, and their witness may be true, but belief and recognition are gifts of grace based upon God’s call. She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!98” (which means Teacher) (20:16b). My own know me. What matters here is recognition. Mary recognizes the one whom she thought she had lost. She sees that the risen Jesus is truly the same Jesus who lived and taught and died, and in this perception she—and through her the fourth evangelist—is at one with all other witnesses to the resurrection. But that is not all that the risen Jesus is, and neither therefore is the mere acknowledgement of that identity enough. Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me [mē mou haptou]” (20:17a). Commentators are generally agreed that the possible—even probable—implications of the phrase mē mou haptou have not been well conveyed either by the “do not touch me” of Douay-Rheims (which

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was, of course, directly translating Jerome’s “noli me tangere”) or by the “touch me not” of the King James Version. Both, in comparison with the possible implications of the fourth evangelist’s Greek, are minimalist. Two points in particular must be made. First, it is evident that Greek haptō is frequently used of a more involved and closer contact than is generally implied by the English “touch.” Thus the possible translations of haptō suggested by the lexicons include “fasten oneself,” “grasp,” “cling to,” and “take hold of.”99 Specifically in connection with John 20:17, BDAG compares Arrian, Anabasis 6.13.13, wherein Alexander, having been severely wounded, reappears among his soldiers who, finding it hard to believe that he is still alive, are found “taking hold (haptomenoi) of his hands, knees, and clothing in astonishment and delight.” Secondly, the fourth evangelist’s use of the present imperative (mē mou haptou) suggests “an action already in progress.”100 In other words, Mary is not being told not to touch or embrace Jesus, but to desist from doing so. Therefore the NAB’s “stop holding on to me,” though not elegant, is acceptable, as is “do not cling to me” suggested by Westcott, Lightfoot, Brown, and Moloney,101 and “stop clinging to me!” suggested by BDAG. But why?—“for,” says Jesus, “I have not yet ascended to the Father102” (20:17b). We are at once faced with another problem. Mary is not told to stop clinging or attempting to cling to Jesus because he is about to ascend to the Father but because he has not yet ascended to the Father. As C. K. Barrett says, “it seems to be implied that it will be possible and permissible to touch Jesus after the ascension, though not before.” “And this,” he adds, “is the reverse of what might have been expected.”103 Indeed it is, as is evident from the reactions to it of several commentators!104 Various attempts have been made to explain the passage or, rather, to explain it away. Some involve textual emendation, although there is no support for emendation in the manuscript tradition.105 Most involve strange and unlikely understandings of the syntax. Thus Barrett and others have argued that we must paraphrase Jesus’ words as follows: “Stop touching me; it is true that I have not yet ascended to the Father but I am about to do so; this is what you must tell my brothers.”106 This, Barrett says, is “perfectly intelligible,” and indeed it is—as English! The problem, however, is that as a rendering of John 20:17 it involves us in painfully straining the evangelist’s syntax so as to make Jesus say something directly opposite to what he seems to say when we take the syntax in its plain and obvious sense. Or, to put the matter another way, if the Johannine Jesus wished to say what Barrett has him say, why did he not simply say it? By way of explaining this passage, we need to remember two points. First (and as Brown correctly points out107), there is no need—indeed, it is a serious

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mistake—to confuse the question more than it is already confused by bringing the story of doubting Thomas into it. It is simply not true (as for example R. H. Lightfoot claimed) that “Thomas is invited at 20.27 to do that which at 20.17 was forbidden Mary.”108 The vocabulary used in the two stories is different (the key word haptō does not occur in the Thomas story) and, much more importantly, the issue involved in the story of Thomas is different.109 Second, the vocabulary of “ascension” (anabainō) here used is peculiarly Johannine. Evidently, therefore, we must connect it with its use at various points earlier in the gospel, wherein it speaks in general of a journey from and to the Father that frames Jesus’ ministry (3:13; 6:62; 13:1, 3). It is language that stems from traditions of the Son of Man coming “with the clouds of heaven” that begin as early as Daniel 7:13–14.110 Jesus, in John’s view, is the Son of Man who descended to earth from heaven (3:13), brought about judgment through his presence on earth (3:17–19; 5:27; 16:8–11), and returned to his Father (20:17).111 All of which is to say that, however transformed, this is still the language of Jewish eschatology—an eschatology which, as we have seen, is never about a purely “spiritual” future, but is rather bound up with the “transfigured physicality” of a renewed creation.112 It is in the light of this kind of hope that we should understand Jesus’ ascension to the Father here. When Jesus is fully ascended, then, as Archbishop Arthur Michael Ramsey put it, “it will be permissible for Mary to touch the Lord, for new modes of touch will then have become available.”113 Exactly. Or as Westcott says, “When that last triumph is accomplished, then you will be able to enjoy the communion which is as yet impossible.”114 So we may take John’s Jesus at 2:17b simply to have meant what he said, and we have no need either to amend his words or to understand his syntax in cruel and unusual ways.115 Indeed, the nuance of this interchange with Mary has been better caught by some of the painters than by many commentators. I think particularly of Titian’s Noli me tangere in the National Gallery in London (fig. 9). The scene is intensely physical. The Risen One moves away from Mary’s grasp, yet as he does so he also bends over her and toward her. His gaze is warm and compassionate. His movement is the movement of a dance rather than an evasion, an invitation to follow rather than an avoidance or a rejection. So Titian perfectly catches the implications of the Johannine not yet. “But go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (20:17c). Jesus affirms that his Father to whom he is already ascending (we note that the verb is now the present tense) is also the disciples’ Father and God. “The father of Jesus is God! And through him God has become the Father of those who belong to Jesus!”116 Therefore those to whom Mary is sent are still Jesus’ brethren (the only time he applies

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that description to his disciples in the Fourth Gospel). The Risen One affirms the continuance of his family unity with the disciples, a unity that has survived even their failure to act as disciples. Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord” (20:18a). The form of confession here attributed to Mary is clearly ancient (cf. 1 Cor 9:1); it is a first-person equivalent to the “he appeared to” or “he was seen by” of the apostolic formula (1 Cor 15:5). And she told them that he had said these things to her (20:18b). The change from direct to indirect speech is abrupt. In the manuscript tradition various copyists at this point attempt to improve John’s Greek, a sure indication that in antiquity, too, there were those who considered the passage to be somewhat clumsily written. Perhaps the evangelist reverted to a summary in indirect speech because, while he did not wish to imply that the message of Jesus ascending to the Father had been forgotten or omitted from Mary’s message, he did not wish it to take anything away from the power and centrality of her apostolic confession, “I have seen the Lord.”117 2. the appearance to the ten. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week (20:19a)—the evangelist carefully links his second appearance story to his first. Earlier, Mary went to the disciples with the word of Jesus’ resurrection and promise, and now, we learn, it is the evening of that same day when—the doors being locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews (20:19b). Apparently the good news of the risen Lord is not enough to prevent fear, though the evangelist does not make clear just why the disciples were afraid. Are we to suppose they feared that they would be accused of stealing the body? Or that the authorities would start to persecute them, as they had persecuted Jesus? Whatever the case, we note that this information serves to remind us that the Lord is no longer bound by any ordinary laws of nature or life. Despite the doors being locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace to you” (20:19cd). “The doors, which protect and seclude the disciples . . . can neither exclude the Christ nor prevent Him discovering His own” (Hoskyns).118 He offers what is at first sight the most ordinary of salutations: Peace to you, shalom aleicem. It is a commonplace form of greeting to this day. Yet even at its most commonplace, it resonates for those who have ears to hear with a whole line of biblical tradition. In that tradition, peace is the gift of God to his faithful people. It is the harmony that comes from a loving and trusting relationship with God, when the people also relate to each other with justice and compassion (Jer 22:2–5; cf. Ps 133).119 That is why God’s true, eschatological king of Israel will be “Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6–7, cf. Ezk. 34.23–25; Zech 9:9–10; Ps 72:1–7). In the Fourth Gospel, the word “peace” has appeared before this only in Jesus’ farewell discourses, where he bestowed peace upon his followers—not just any

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peace, but his own peace (14:27), that harmony of soul which was his to give because he was going to the Father (14:28) and had overcome the world (16:33). So now to the troubled hearts of the disciples this greeting in the moment of God’s Easter victory—Peace to you!—comes as a word of fulfillment, of revelation and grace, expressing neither wish nor hope but fact, “for,” as the writer to the Ephesians saw, “he is our peace” (Eph 2:14). “So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we all of us have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph 2:18). When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side (20:20a). Perhaps there is an element of apologetic here, as at Luke 24:39–40, yet that is not the main point of the passage.120 Rather there is, as Westcott noted, “a solemn pathos” in the description. He who was thus wounded is alone qualified to bring peace, “for he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors” (Isa 53:12).121 Above all, of course, it is established who he is. As in the scene with Mary Magdalene, so here, we are to be clear that although he is transformed, there is an identity between the Risen One and the earthly Jesus who died on a cross.122 So the disciples rejoiced (echarēsan123) when they saw the Lord (20:20b). As elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel, “joy” is related especially to Jesus’ presence. Thus we recall the Last Supper and Jesus’ farewell discourse: “you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy (eis charan) . . . I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice (charēsetai), and your joy (tēn charan humēn) no one takes from you” (16:20b, 22b; cf. 14:9). The narrative pause implied in the present moment of rejoicing also gives us, however, an opportunity to hear Jesus repeat his salutation and then add to it further words that say more of what is implied in this peace that is the Risen One’s gift. Jesus therefore (oun) said to them again (palin124), “Peace to you! As the Father has sent (apestalken) me, even so I send (pempō125) you” (20:21). As in Paul and in the other evangelists (1 Cor 15:8–9; Gal 1:16; Matt 28:19; Luke 24:47; cf. Mark 16:7, [15]) the vision of the risen Christ is also a commissioning vision; the peace that Christ brings is a peace that calls to be shared. In John, however, all this has a typically “Johannine” shape. Specifically, only in John is the mission called for by the Risen One seen as directly modeled on Jesus’ own “being sent” by the Father (cf. 17:18–26).126 “John is concerned with the supreme passing on of Jesus’ authority and commission: the fellowship of the disciples is to make him present in the world.”127 And when he had said this, he breathed (enephusēsen) on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22). Here is fulfilled the promise made in the farewell discourses (14:26; 16:13–15), in much the same way as what happens at Pentecost in Acts fulfills the promise of Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8.

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Commentators generally, and understandably, point to the parallel use of enephusēsen at LXX Genesis 2:7 (cf. Ezek 36:25–27). Barrett observes, “That John intended to depict an event of significance parallel to that of the first creation of humanity cannot be doubted; this was the beginning of the new creation.”128 The disciples are then sent as Christ was sent. They receive the Spirit to empower them for that, and so henceforth they will participate in the work of him “who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29). If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven (apheōntai129); if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (20:23). Both Luke (24:46–47) and the author of Mark’s longer ending (Mark 16:16) show the Risen Christ linking the proclamation of the gospel and the forgiveness of sins—the latter with particular clarity: “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.” Such a link may well be intended at John 20:23, in both its positive and its negative aspect, which is to say, where the church baptizes, sins are forgiven, and where it does not, where there is no belief, they are retained. That seems to be how many Christians of the first three centuries understood this verse, and that is the understanding of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed, which confesses “one baptism for the remission of sins” (hen baptisma eis aphesis hamartiōn).130 That did not mean, however, that the forgiveness the church could offer in Christ’s name was limited to the matter of admitting or not admitting candidates to baptism. Rather, as T. Herbert Bindley said, commenting on the Nicene formulary to which I have just referred, “the spiritual sphere upon which the believer enters [at baptism] is a sphere of forgiveness, and though acts of sin may be committed, they may be daily remitted. ‘Semel abluimus baptismate, cotidie abluimus oratione’ (Augustine, Ser. ad Catech. xv).”131 This is surely congruent with the intention of the fourth evangelist, who evidently envisaged an ongoing community (20:29). That community will certainly have experienced the need for forgiveness after baptism, as other elements in the Johannine tradition make clear (1 John 1:7–9; 2:12). That community was also, it appears, well aware that fellow Christians would have a role to play in such forgiveness (1 John 5:16–17). 3. the appearance to thomas. Now Thomas, one of the twelve,132 called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord” (20:24–25a). Again the evangelist is careful to tie his stories together. The apostolic summary gives an opportunity for the disciples other than Thomas to speak of their experience, although from the narrative point of view what matters is that it prepares the way for Thomas’ challenge.

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But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will never believe” (20:25b). Thomas’ problem does indeed seem to have something in common with the problem reflected in Luke 24:37–40. What does it mean that the others have seen the Lord? Perhaps what they have seen is Jesus’ angel or a ghost? How is one to know that they have truly seen him? In the the following narrative, then, we should probably see an element of apologetic. We should also see much more. After eight days–that is, the Sunday after the Sunday of the resurrection—his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, “Peace be with you” (20:26). Quite deliberately, it seems, the situation of the first appearance is echoed. The gospel began with a staggering act of divine condescension for the sake of the cosmos, which was that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (1:14). It ends with another act of divine condescension for the sake of one disciple. Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side” (20:27a). Thomas is offered precisely the intimacy that he had demanded. But he is also asked to pass beyond that: “and be not faithless (apistos), but faithful (pistos)!” (20:27b). That said—and this is the point at which the narrative clearly points us beyond apologetic—there is not the slightest indication in the text that Thomas availed himself of the offer. Rather, we gain the impression that the Lord’s word and presence alone were enough. Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” (20:28). Understandably Raymond Brown called this “the supreme Christological pronouncement of the fourth gospel.”133 Thomas has passed far beyond anything that the “proof” he asked for could have shown him, even if he had insisted on it. In the face of all that has passed, he now engages Jesus as the psalmist had engaged God, looking for the Lord’s steadfast love and faithfulness: “awake to my defense, my God and my Lord” (Ps 35:23).134 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (20:29). As I have said, this narrative is evidently concerned with issues different from those involved in the account of the appearance to the Magdalene. The story of Thomas does indeed limit the significance of appearances of the Risen One, basically by making the point that the experience of such appearances is not necessary for true and blessed discipleship. Nevertheless, even here we do not have a critique or denial of those appearances. We simply have an affirmation of those who hold the faith once delivered to the saints even though they have not received the peculiar privileges and burdens of the first apostolate. In the same spirit, the

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author of 1 Peter also addressed Christians who had not seen the Risen One: “Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet 1:8–9). So the evangelist looks forward to coming generations of believers, to those who will listen to John’s gospel. Indeed, he looks forward to the church. 4. the author’s purpose. Now Jesus did many other signs (sēmeia) in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book (20:30). This is the first time that the evangelist has used the word signs since it was used in the conclusion to the “Book of Signs” (i.e., at 12:37), throughout which it had occurred frequently (2:11, 23; 3:2; 4:48, 54; 6:2, 14, 26, 30; 7:31; 9:16; 10:41; 11:47; 12:18). There it referred to revelatory acts of Jesus in his earthly ministry, performed in the presence of disciples and of those who refused belief. In this precise sense, as Raymond Brown pointed out, the resurrection of Jesus is not a sign because in his passion and resurrection “Jesus has passed from the realm of sign to that of truth.”135 Jesus’ passion and resurrection are not merely revelatory of something other and greater but are what they reveal. Nevertheless, we surely may not ignore that fact that it is precisely at this point, after he has recounted the appearances of the Risen Jesus, that John again chooses to use this word. And indeed, although the cross and the resurrection are not merely signs, still they are signs; that is to say, they are the truth, but they also reveal the truth, as John has shown them doing to Mary, to the ten, and to Thomas. As to what other signs the evangelist may have in mind as he speaks of those that he has not written, it is impossible to know; perhaps he means no more than to refer in general terms to the broad tradition about the words and works of Jesus from which he has drawn136 or to other resurrection appearances137 or to material in the synoptic tradition. And of course these and other suggestions do not necessarily exclude one another. In any case his real purpose in this sentence is not to provoke such speculation as that but to move us forward to understand his purpose in writing at all, which is to promote the “work” for which the Son of Man himself called (6:29), and for the same reason: But these are written that you may continue to have faith (pisteuēte)138 that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (20:32a)— which is to say, as throughout the gospel, that you may continue to have faith that Jesus is not simply the national Messiah of Israel for whom some had hoped but a divine Messiah, the unique Son of God. And the end of this faith, as also throughout the gospel (6:40; cf. 3:16, 36; 5:24; 11:25) is that believing you may have life in his name (20:31b).139

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Epilogue: Jesus Appears to the Disciples by the Lake of Galilee John 20:30–31 sounded very like a conclusion, yet—as has happened before with John (cf. 14:30–31)—it is a “conclusion” that is then followed by a great deal. Indeed, it is followed by an account that we should be loath to lose. In the light of the “conclusion” that we have just heard, many commentators refer to this part of the narrative as an “epilogue,” added in the light of events in the life of the community. Personally, I find it hard to suppose that it was, as some suggest, designed to be a part of the gospel from its inception, so balancing the prologue at 1:1–18.140 Rather, it appears to be an epilogue added in the light of events in the life of the community, as I shall indicate in my comments.141 That is not to say that it has no relationship to what has preceded it. On the contrary, it was clearly written in full knowledge of what had gone before,142 and was intended to be understood as qualifying and being qualified by that. After these things Jesus revealed (ephanerōsen143) himself again (palin) to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he revealed himself in this way (houtōs). With the word again (palin), the epilogue is unambiguously linked to what has preceded it; with the forward-pointing in this way (houtōs), which is not a normal Johannine usage, we are directed toward the additional narrative that is to come. Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together (21:1–2). Swiftly, the narrator sets his characters upon the stage. The apostles—or rather, a group of them—are to be the subjects of the action. But how are we to account for this curious list? Simon Peter is present as we might expect in a Johannine narrative (cf. 6:8; 13:6, 9; 18:10, 15, 25; 20:6; 21:2, 3). But are Thomas and Nathanael there to remind us of their confessions at the beginning and the end of the gospel? And if so, why is their order reversed? Is the naming of the sons of Zebedee (they are never so characterized elsewhere in the gospel) meant to hint that one of them is John, who is “the beloved disciple”? Or is the beloved disciple hiding even more modestly behind one of the unnamed two other of his disciples? Is it significant that there are seven disciples? And if so, why does the writer not give us some hint that this is so? Or is the entire list, with all its oddities, simply what the writer (or writers) of the final chapter received from their source, the witness to whom they will appeal with such passion at the end of their narrative (21:24)? It is frustrating, but there appears to be no very convincing way to answer any of these questions. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat; but that night they caught nothing (21:3). The group of disciples return to their old work as if absolutely nothing has happened to them: they seem to know nothing of resurrection

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appearances or the gift of the Spirit. Simply, “I am going fishing” and “We will go with you.” Peter, to be sure, is still the leader, but he is leading them nowhere. Hoskyns’ description of the scene as “one of complete apostasy”144 is perhaps, as Brown says, stronger than the narrative warrants, but it is understandable. The scene surely fulfills the prophecy of John 16:32 (“you shall be scattered, everyone to his own”) and is a picture of “aimless activity undertaken in desperation.”145 The redeeming narrative that follows, as it now stands, falls into several distinct episodes.

The Miraculous Catch of Fish and the Meal by the Sea Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Lads, you haven’t caught any fish, have you?” They answered him, “No!” He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, for the quantity of fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he tucked in his smock, for he was stripped for work, and sprang into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off (21:4–8). Dodd considered this narrative to be an obvious example of what he called “a circumstantial type of narrative,”146 with dialogue, some drama, and plenty of lively detail. “The centre of interest is the recognition of the risen Lord, but here the recognition is not immediate but spread over an appreciable period.”147 The narrative sequence—appearance and nonrecognition, followed by question and answer still without recognition, and finally by Jesus’ word and act that lead to recognition (21:4–7)—all this reminds us particularly of Jesus’ appearance to the Magdalene (20:14–16). But we are also reminded of John’s narrative of the empty tomb, and especially the part involving Peter and the beloved disciple. There, the disciple who loved Jesus most was the first to arrive at the tomb and (in some sense) to “believe”; here he is the first to recognize him. Yet in both episodes it is Simon Peter who then takes the lead in action; here he tucked in his smock, for he was stripped for work, and sprang into the sea (21:7; cf. 20:3–8).148 The account of the miraculous catch of fish has obvious points of contact with the story of a miraculous catch in Luke 5:1–11—not only by the mode in which the catch is brought about after a fruitless night, but also by the centrality of Peter. Indeed, in Luke’s story also it can be said that Peter “recognizes” Jesus (Luke 5:8), although not in quite the sense in which he recognizes him here.149

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When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish lying on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord (21:9–12). At this point in the narrative a second theme presents itself alongside the miraculous catch of fish: Jesus feeds his people.150 Here we recall the miraculous feeding of the crowd, which was also, according to John, in the vicinity of “the Sea of Tiberias” (6:1–14). Perhaps the narrator considers that the other disciples had not shared Peter’s and the beloved disciple’s initial recognition of the Risen One, since for them, it seems, this is their moment of recognition. At Jesus’ invitation, “Come and have breakfast,” they are filled with awe so that they dare not even question him, for they realize that it is the Lord. The scene is filled with a deep, revelatory joy. Yet the theme of the miraculous catch is not forgotten. In Luke 5:1–11 it is clearly understood as symbolizing the apostolic mission: “Fear not, from henceforth you shall catch people” (Luke 4:10). There seems to be the same symbolism here except that John goes further: at least two elements in the narrative appear to be intended allegorically, the enormous number of fish indicating the scope of the apostolic mission, and the net that was not torn suggesting that the church can contain all these different kinds of people without being fragmented. As Barrett says, “The church remains one, despite the number and variety of its members.”151 So much seems reasonably likely, but then we have the real puzzle. The evangelist is careful that we shall have the exact number of the fish. Why? He could easily have said something like, “about (hōs) a hundred and fifty”—a good Johannine usage (cf. 1:39; 6:19; 11:18) that would make his general point just as well. But he does not. He seems to think that the exact number is important. That granted, just why that is so remains a mystery. Numerous interpretations have been proposed,152 of which the best known is probably the suggestion that it alludes to the 153 different species of fish that Jerome claimed (wrongly, it appears) had been recorded by Greek zoology, and that by this allusion it points to the totality and inclusiveness of the Christian mission.153 Other proposals include Augustine’s mathematical approach (3 by 50, plus 3 as the symbol of the Trinity) and modern solutions involving gematria (replacing the numbers with letters of the same numerical value); thus we might substitute for “153” the phrase qehal hā-ahăbâ, meaning “church of charity.” The fish might then be seen as representing the disciples, and the content of the net dragged to shore

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by St. Peter as the church of charity.154 The problem with most—perhaps all—of these proposals is that, while one grants that the ancients were much more prepared than we are to see particular numbers and combinations of numbers as significant, still one is left wondering just how, without further information, the evangelist’s audience was supposed to know what the particular significance of the number was on this occasion or to work it out. The best solution may then be the simplest: that the number is there because it was in the source to which John appealed and perhaps for no other reason than that somebody thought or claimed that that was the number of fish that had been caught. It may originally have no more “meaning” than Luke’s “great multitude of fishes” (Luke 5:6); in other words, it may simply mean that there was a very large amount of fish. That such an amount should then be associated with the multitudes that would turn to Christ is something that might happen, as it clearly does in Luke, without being the origin of the number itself. We may note, incidentally, that on at least one other occasion John shows a taste for large numbers in order to point up the extraordinariness of a “sign,” namely, in his account of the marriage at Cana. In that narrative, while most commentators would see symbolic significance in the water “after the Jews’ manner of purifying” that becomes wine (John 2:6, 9), few, I believe, would ascribe such significance to the numbers involved, beyond the mere fact that they are, presumably deliberately, very large numbers (John 2:6). I incline to think that at John 21:11 we have no more than that—and, of course, no less. At 21:10 the two themes—the meal that Jesus provides and the miraculous catch—are combined: Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” Although Jesus already has what is necessary, he is prepared to use what the disciples bring, just as, when he fed the crowds, he used the five barley loaves and the two fishes that the child produced. So then the child, and now his disciples, become “fellow workers” in the enterprise.155 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish (21:13). We return to the theme of the meal. The Risen One feeds his people. Naturally we think of Eucharist. That is not to say that the present meal is a Eucharist, or even that other meals that the Lord shares with his followers do not have more “eucharistic” features than this one has. Thus, we miss the characteristic fourfold action of the Lord (as even at John 6:11–12: “he took . . . he gave thanks . . . [he broke (implicit)] . . . he gave). Here we are only told that the Lord took (but that he “gave thanks” is perhaps implicit156) and gave. Nevertheless, what this account unquestionably does give us is the essential experience described by the kerygma of Acts, namely, that “we did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41) and that—continuing

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table fellowship with the Risen Lord—is an (perhaps the) essential element in the Eucharistic experience. This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead (21:14). Here again there is a clear intention to establish links and to emphasize continuity with the main gospel narrative that has gone before. But then we are tempted to ask—can the writer count? Possibly not!—but other explanations of the apparent inconsistency are possible such as that he does not count the appearance to Mary Magdalene because he does not regard her strictly as a “disciple,”157 or because, as a woman, her witness was not formally so significant as that of the males (in that case we might compare the apparent omission of the women’s witness from the apostolic formula at 1 Cor 15:5–8)158, or even because the appearance to Mary Magdalene was a privileged appearance to her alone, and by “the disciples” the evangelist here means us to understand strictly the group of men (“my brethren”—20:18) to whom she had been sent as witness.159 the conversation. When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love (agapas160) me more than these?” (21:15a). The meal over, Jesus addresses Peter formally, Simon, son of John, employing the patronymic that he had used when they first met. Brown is surely correct: “Jesus is treating him less familiarly and thus challenging his friendship.”161 “Well, sir? What have you say for yourself?” The exact meaning of the question that follows was doubtless clear in the mind of the writer but is not so for us. The words more than these (pleon toutōn) could be either masculine or neuter, and therefore the question do you love me more than these? could be understood either as, “Do you love me more than these things—all this fishing tackle and equipment to which you have so speedily returned?” or “Do you love me more than these other disciples do, as you seemed to be implying at the Last Supper when you made the loudest boast about your loyalty to me (13.18)?” Both interpretations have had their distinguished advocates.162 Both are plausible. The main point of the question is, however, clear, and Peter responds to it. He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love (philō163) you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time (to triton164), “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep” (21:15b–17). The intention here to reinstate Peter, the threefold question corresponding to his threefold denial (13:38; 18:17, 25–27), can hardly be doubted.165 Peter is,

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indeed, grieved at the third question, yet in that grief is moved to his wisest reply, which is to omit the “Yes, Lord” of his previous replies (as if he truly knew anything even of himself!) and instead to throw himself utterly upon the divine perception: Lord, you know everything. Therefore, you know that I love you—even though, we might add in paraphrase, your threefold question reminds me that I three times failed you and probably will fail you again. Still, you know that I love you. Jesus’ threefold commission to Peter to feed or tend my lambs or my sheep (21:15, 16, 17) links us with the heart of the gospel and is a commission to share in the work that the Father has entrusted to the Son (10:1–30), for it is made clear (also thrice repeated) that these are still my sheep—entrusted to the Son by the Father, who does not thereby give up his rights: “I am the good shepherd” (10:11). Therefore the awful “dominion” given to Peter is not his, but the Lord’s (cf. Acts 20:28; 1 Pet 5:2–4). As Jesus says to Peter in Augustine’s paraphrase of this passage, “don’t think to feed yourself, but feed my sheep as mine, not as yours; seek my glory in them, not yours; my dominion, not yours” [non te pascere cogita, sed oves meas sicut meas pasce, non sicut tuas; gloriam meam in eis quaere, non tuam, dominium meum non tuum] (On John, 123.5).166 Of the forgoing section of the gospel and what follows Dodd observed “it may be that those critics are right who surmise in the background some adjustment of the claims of Rome (for Peter) and Ephesus (for the beloved disciple).”167 Indeed it may.168 the prophecy. It is enough. Peter is commissioned for the third time. Then follows a prophecy that both amplifies his commission and also shows how complete is his pardon, how thorough his reinstatement. “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go” (21:18). In itself, this prophecy could be understood as speaking of nothing more (or less) than the burdens and constraints of apostolate.169 “When you were younger, you belonged to yourself; when you are older, you will belong to another—that is, you will belong to me.” Paul says no less of his own apostolate: “Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ, called to be apostle” (Rom 1:1) and again, “For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing of which to glory, for necessity is laid upon me; for woe to me, if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor 9:16). The Johannine writer, however, knows of the final way in which Peter would stretch out his hands and be taken where he did not wish to go: his execution in the Vatican district of Rome.170 So, in good Johannine style (cf. 2:22; 12:33) he indicates how the Risen One’s prophecy can be seen as pointing even to that: This he said to show by what death he was

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to glorify God. Here is a normal way for a Christian to speak of martyrdom (cf. 1 Pet 4:16; Martyrdom of Polycarp 19:2). By such a death, evidently, the martyr participates in a special way in the work of Christ, who also glorifies the Father by his death (17:1). Whether (as at 12:33 and 18:32) we are also to hear an allusion to the manner of Peter’s death (by crucifixion) is perhaps less clear.171 And after this he said to him, “Follow me” (21:19). The following narrative does seem to envisage Peter and John walking aside with Jesus in a quite literal sense, so perhaps the plain sense of “follow” should not be entirely ruled out here. Nevertheless, more is surely intended. During Jesus’ earthly ministry, “following” him had required a certain kind of faithfulness. Now it will require more: “the perception of his course; the spiritual discernment by which His movements can still be discovered; and yet further readiness to accept martyrdom at the end” (Westcott).172 Peter turned and saw following them the disciple whom Jesus loved, who had lain close to his breast at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” (21:20–21). The narrator seems to picture Jesus walking along with his disciples as he had during his earthly ministry. The parenthetical reference to the beloved disciple is a mosaic of phrases from the gospel’s Last Supper narrative (13:2, 21, and 25), and is surely in the Johannine manner (19:39). Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” The saying spread abroad among the brethren that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?” (21:22–23). Here, for the only time in the Fourth Gospel, a scenario similar to that set forward by Luke is unambiguously implied,173 the repeated phrase until I come (21:22–23), suggesting a cessation of the resurrection appearances and a subsequent return, the parousia. The reference occurs in the context of what appears to be a particular concern of the Johannine community that was also a motivating factor (which is not to say that there were not other motivating factors174) for the addition of this chapter to the gospel. It certainly looks as if either the beloved disciple had died or was dying. This had created a stumbling block for some. As Brown says, “Either this death or its obvious imminence must have presented to the Johannine community the agonizing problem of survival without the principal living link to Jesus.”175 In the gospel as a whole, the question here implied had, indeed, already received a major part of its answer in the Last Supper discourses: it is the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, who will guide the church into all truth since “he will take what is mine, and declare it to you”(16:14; cf. 14:26). But one may well understand how easily, in the immediate grief and shock of the event, that wisdom might for a

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while be overlooked. The saying that the disciple was not to die need not, of course, have come from the disciple himself. It might have arisen in any number of ways.176 conclusions. This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things (ho marturōn peri toutōn kai ho grapsas tauta); and we know that his testimony is true (21:24). I have already indicated my general understanding of this verse.177 The disciple who is bearing witness is the evangelist, the beloved disciple; these things that he has written (grapsas178) are the contents of the gospel as a whole, for which he is finally responsible in its details as in its totality; and we are his disciples, his school, who have taken responsibility for this final witness to his witness. And there are also many other things which Jesus did; which things, if they were ever to be written (atina ean graphētai) one by one (kath’en), I do not think (oud’ . . . oimai) that the world itself could contain the books that would be written (21:25). There is little evidence to suggest that the gospel ever circulated without this curious addition,179 although scholia in a Greek commentary written before the eighth century preserve for us the conjectures of earlier commentators that it was a scribal gloss.180 One can see why they might think that. The verse appears to be without theological significance, has little connection with what precedes it, and is marked by various stylistic peculiarities, not least striking of which is the shift from “we” to “I.”181 While I sympathize with Brown’s reluctance to posit “without real proof . . . still another Johannine writer,”182 such an explanation does seem to fit what lies before us, and it is not, after all, as if we had “real proof” for virtually any of our suppositions about Johannine authorship. I therefore think we best explain 21:25 as a small flourish by the amanuensis. Before laying down his stylus, the secretary who had taken the dictation could not resist adding a brief comment—a short hyperbole—on his own account. Which said, I for my part cannot resist adding the further comment of Schnackenburg, who does not share Brown’s scruples about introducing another Johannine writer: “If this writer likewise belonged to the editorial circle, he was not its most capable person.”183 No indeed! But doubtless he wrote a very pretty hand.

PART III

Questioning the Witnesses

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9 What Should We Make of the Witnesses’ Claims?

There was, of course, an obvious problem with Christian claims about the resurrection of Christ and, as I noted in the prologue to this account, it was there from the beginning. Dead men do not rise—or, at least, they do not normally. So—even within the pages of the New Testament—the evidence is that many people, pagans and Jews alike, found the Christian proclamation extremely hard to accept. Pagans are described as having “scoffed” at mention of the dead being raised (Acts 17:32). Jews, even if they believed in resurrection (as did the Pharisees) and therefore had no difficulty in granting its possibility (Acts 23:6–10), were still likely, as loyal Israelites, to be mightily offended by such “resurrection” being proclaimed in connection with a “Messiah” whom God had allowed pagans to crucify. They would find the notion of “a Messiah crucified” to be “a snare” (skandalon) as Paul put it (1 Cor 1:23 cf. Gal 5:11)—and here if anywhere, surely Paul the Pharisee and former persecutor of the church knew precisely what he was talking about. So it is hardly surprising that from the very beginning there have never been lacking those who rejected the Christian explanation of Easter and put forward other explanations of the Christians’ extraordinary claim and extraordinary behavior. These explanations generally, it seems to me, fall into variations of five types.1 One, and perhaps the most obvious, of these explanations is that there was a deliberate deception on the part of the apostles. This explanation may claim the dignity of being first, at least in canonical

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order of the New Testament. As we have seen, Matthew records for us a story that was, he says,2 put about by the priests from the very beginning: that the disciples had come to the tomb and stolen the body of Jesus while the guards were asleep (Matt 28:11–15; also Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 108.23). But of course others have repeated and elaborated on the theory of deception—as did, for example, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, perhaps the most famous of all exponents of this view.4 Secondly, and I suppose a little more kindly, it has been claimed that there was some kind of misunderstanding or misconception about the tomb. While this view has only the dignity of coming second in the canonical order, in compensation for that it may claim the added dignity of apostolic authority, since it is attributed to the apostles themselves. According to Luke (and to be sure, Luke was evidently here having a little fun at the expense of male arrogance), when the women went and told the eleven of the empty tomb and the angel’s message, the apostles dismissed their information as “an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (24:11).5 As for just how the women might have come by this “idle tale” the eleven (at least in Luke’s account) did not bother to say, but in the succeeding two thousand or so years there have certainly not been lacking those who would supply that deficiency. So, for example, we may suppose that (a) the women went to the wrong tomb,6; or (b) that they went to the right tomb but it had already been emptied by some means, perhaps by the Jewish authorities removing Jesus’ body so that it could not become a center of veneration; or (c) because a sorcerer or necromancer had stolen the corpse for body parts (tomb robbery, as we have noted, was by no means uncommon in antiquity [compare Chariton, Calirrhoe 2.5.10])7; or (d) that Joseph of Arimathea or the gardener had removed it for some purpose of their own.8 Whatever the means, proponents of these theories all suggest, more or less, that a mistaken belief that the tomb had been supernaturally emptied led to an equally mistaken belief that Jesus had risen. Thirdly, it has been asserted that Jesus had never really died on the cross; he only fainted. Then he revived in the tomb and left it. Later, when he met his disciples, they mistakenly assumed that he had risen from the dead.9 Fourthly, it has been suggested that the disciples experienced purely subjective visions or hallucinations of Jesus, confusing fantasy with reality. Such opinions were expressed in antiquity by Celsus (Origen, Against Celsus, 2.55, 60), and in the nineteenth century by David Friedrich Strauss in his Leben Jesu.10 Perhaps such “appearances” were brought on among Jesus disciples by guilt over their betrayal of him or in Saul by a previously unacknowledged attraction to Jesus, and then further appearances followed as a result of mass hysteria. A prominent recent exponent of this kind of view has been Gerd

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Lüdemann, although, without rejecting it outright, he dislikes the word “hallucination” as too negative, preferring to speak of “visions.”11 Be that as it may, according to Lüdemann: For Peter, in the drama of the situation on Good Friday and his denial, the world has collapsed. At Easter the word of Jesus, i.e. the word of Jesus forgiveness, once again came to Peter, shattered and in mourning, despite his denial and despite Jesus death: he ‘saw’ Jesus. He experienced the word of Jesus as something living, as an encounter with the whole Jesus himself, in an image . . . The mourning first led to a deeper understanding of Jesus, and this in turn helped toward a new understanding of the situation of mourning. Recollections of who Jesus was led to the recognition of who Jesus is. Seeing Jesus therefore led to a whole chain of (potential!) theological conclusions.12 Again: At the heart of the Christian religion lies a vision described in Greek by Paul as ōphthē—“he was seen.” And Paul himself, who claims to have witnessed an appearance, asserted repeatedly “I have seen the Lord.” So Paul is the main source of the thesis that a vision is the origin of the belief in the resurrection . . . When we talk about visions, we must include something that we experience every night when we dream. That’s our subconscious way of dealing with reality. A vision of that sort was at the heart of the Christian religion; and that vision, reinforced by enthusiasm, was contagious and led to many more visions, until we have an appearance to more than five hundred people.13 As Lüdemann shows, such visions or appearances of departed people are not an uncommon phenomenon, even in the modern world.14 Of course, according to this version, the tomb was never really empty; that was simply a legend, an accretion to the tradition. Fifthly, it has been suggested that the disciples received genuine, veridical visions of the Risen One. These visions were given to them by God, so as to show them that the victorious Jesus, despite his cruel death, had nonetheless been raised by God and had entered into the life of God. Such, if I understand him correctly, is the view of Marcus J. Borg. For Borg, the historical ground of Easter is very simple: the followers of Jesus, both then and now, continued to experience Jesus as a living reality after his death. In the early Christian community, these experiences included visions or apparitions of Jesus.15

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And Borg is quite clear where this view of the events leaves him. In dialogue with the evangelical scholar N. T. Wright, “we agree,” he says, that the best explanation for the rise of Christianity—indeed the only adequate explanation—is the resurrection of Jesus. We also agree about its central meaning . . . Jesus lives, and Jesus is Lord. Both claims are essential: Easter means that Jesus was experienced after his death, and that he is both Lord and Christ.16 The great German New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann presented, as it seems to me, a version of this that differs, in proper Lutheran fashion, only in that it turns upon “the Word” (but God’s true and saving Word, nonetheless) having come to the disciples, rather than visions. “Obviously,” Bultmann wrote, “[the resurrection] is not an event of past history with a self-evident meaning.” Rather, the resurrection of Jesus must be understood “simply as an attempt to convey the meaning of the cross.” The real Easter faith is faith in the word of preaching which brings illumination. If the event of Easter is in any sense an historical event additional to the event of the Cross, it is nothing else than the rise of faith in the risen Lord, since it was this faith which led to the apostolic preaching. The resurrection itself is not an event of past history. All that historical criticism can establish is that the first disciples came to believe in the resurrection.17 In other words, if I understand Bultmann correctly, the redemptive event of the cross was completed, not in anything that actually happened, save for this one true, essential happening: that the disciples came to believe—and to believe correctly, since it is true—that Jesus, the Jesus who was crucified, lives, and is Lord. Of course, this means, again, that the tomb was never really empty. That was a later accretion to the tradition.18 Essentially along the same lines, as it appears to me, is Marianne Sawicki’s suggestion that after Jesus death his followers could comfort one another with the thought that Jesus’ halakhah would survive him. We should assume, she says, that some slogan such as that fell into place immediately after Calvary, because it provides the foundation for development of claims that Jesus can be seen as risen Lord and then eventually for claims that Jesus has experienced a personal resurrection out of his tomb. By way of illustrating how this could happen, Sawicki cites the story of the martyrdom of Rabbi Hananiah ben Teradion during the persecution under Hadrian in the second century. As Rabbi Hananiah was being burned to death in a scroll of Torah, he assured his weeping daughter and his disciples that,

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“the parchments are being burned, but the letters are soaring on high” (b. Abod. Zar. 18a, trans. A. Mishcon)—in other words, “Scrolls of the Torah may be destroyed, but its spirit is immortal and indestructible.”19 “A similar interpretation,” Sawicki suggests, “would have been emotionally and imaginatively available to Jewish followers of Jesus who grieved for him after Calvary.”20 Thus, “there were indeed ‘events’ connected with the resurrection, and they manifested the astonishing salvific intervention of God, but they were events of poiesis or imaginative reconstruction, events of the transformation of human social practices.”21 Obviously, these five “explanations” vary a good deal in quality, and some of them as possible scenarios look (to me at least) a good deal more convincing than others. As attempts to explain the phenomenon of Christian belief they also, of course, differ enormously from each other, so that one has some sympathy with the evangelical scholar James Orr who, writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, observed that, “the contradictions imputed to the Evangelists are trifles compared with those of the critics among themselves in seeking to amend the history.”22 Personally, I find the first two notions—that the New Testament witness and the subsequent life of the church is founded upon a deception or else that it is founded upon a mistake—simply implausible, and that is all I propose to say about them.23 I have scarcely more time for suggestions that the New Testament witness was the result of Jesus revival in the tomb. Anyone who imagines that the survivor of a crucifixion would be in a state to convince anyone that he was the victorious conqueror of death clearly has very little idea what a crucifixion was like. To put the matter mildly, people did not walk away from it. Bruce Chilton’s derisive comment is apt: “These executioners knew what they were doing, and theories that Jesus somehow physically survived the cross represent a combination of fantasy, revisionism, and half-baked science.”24 Lüdemann’s view of the disciples having visions for which their experience had in some sense prepared them has a little more mileage in it. It seems to me that his conjectures (they are, of course, no more than that25) about Peter and Paul would be plausible, if there were no data that a historian had to explain other than a tradition of appearances. But that is not the case. Lüdemann himself notes that “we have to look for the clearest hypothesis to explain all the texts.”26 I agree. And that is the problem with his conjectures, for interesting and even plausible as they may be in themselves, they do not explain the texts, which stubbornly, persistently, and without exception witness to the Easter Faith. One may grant that such visions as Lüdemann describes were common in antiquity and are so still—I will even confess to having had two such

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experiences myself. Yet however common such visions may have been or are (and in a sense, the commoner they were or are, the stronger this objection becomes) neither in antiquity nor in the present are they normally regarded as evidence of resurrection. On the contrary they are taken to be at worst (I suppose) hallucinations, and at best (as I have taken them to be) genuine communications of comfort about the departed from beyond the grave. But in neither case are they considered to be declarations that the departed one has risen from the dead.27 That, however, is what the texts claim about Jesus. That is what Peter and Paul actually say. Why do they do that? Lüdemann’s hypothesis leaves that question unanswered. Hence, it does not explain what Lüdemann himself says needs to be explained.28 The fifth explanation in its various forms commands, from me at least, a good deal more respect, as its proponents generally intend more. That God might have spoken the Word of salvation to disciples through their coming to understand the meaning of Christ’s life and death and to acknowledge His continued power over and ability to change their lives now, and / or that God might have spoken to the disciples through veridical visions of the Savior— these are scenarios that could, and indeed, if taken seriously, must and evidently do—lead to belief in and proclamation of the Easter faith, as manifestly in the cases of Bultmann, Borg, and Sawicki. This, then, is a view of the resurrection that evidently leaves persons in a position where they feel able to confess ex animo the apostolic faith. Nonetheless, it appears to me that it also leaves unanswered a number of serious questions— historical, theological, and ethical. As regards the theological and ethical questions, I intend to return to them.29 For the moment, however, I wish to prescind from those and, instead, try to consider the matter solely from the viewpoint of the critical historian and student of the texts. From that viewpoint, let me say at once that I think that persons who think as do Bultmann, Borg, and Sawicki are mistaken, and by that I mean, “I think that they are mistaken about what happened.” Why do I think that? Simply because, as it appears to me, the various forms of “vision” and “understanding of the cross” hypothesis that they offer do not satisfactorily explain the data that needs to be explained. To begin with, and perhaps to state the obvious (but when the obvious is not stated it may be overlooked) in the New Testament itself “the various accounts suggest precisely the opposite.”30 But surely those who take these views—or at least the scholars among them—already know this? Well, do they? At various points in this account I have already noted the contentions of some scholars that Paul and Mark conceived of the resurrection as a purely spiritual and visionary experience, and I have shown why I believe that that view cannot stand.31 John Dominic Crossan has a rather different approach. Let me quote a

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passage in his discussion of the resurrection narratives that I have found extraordinarily helpful in focusing my own thoughts. When the evangelists spoke about the resurrection of Jesus, they told stories about apparitions or visions. People have visions . . . there is nothing impossible in that. But were these post-resurrection stories accounts of historical visions or apparitions? What sort of narratives were they? Were they histories, or parables? Take, for example, the race to the empty tomb between Peter and the beloved disciple in John 20 . . . I did not think that story was ever intended as a historical event, intended to describe something that first Easter morning. It always looked to me like a calculated and deliberate parable intended to exalt the authority of the beloved disciple over that of Peter. So, from that time on, this question pressed on me: Were there other stories in the final chapters of the four Gospels intended not as histories, but as parables? And if parables, parables of what? If Jesus had a special preference for parables about God, did the evangelists have a special preference for parables about Jesus?32 Crossan is evidently clear that they did. Speaking of his experience of a number of other stories in the gospels, he observes, “Those stories screamed at me, not history, not miracle, but parable. They shouted at me, ‘It’s parable, dummy.’ ”33 Now, as I say, I have found Crossan’s discussion helpful—chiefly so, because his very astute questions have helped me to focus on precisely where I disagree with him. To put the matter in a nutshell, when I read the narratives of the empty tomb and the appearances of the Risen One, while of course I too recognize elements in them that are metaphorical or parabolic—I think, for example (as I have said) that there is probably an element of truth (though somewhat exaggerated) in the view that the fourth evangelist’s account of the race to the tomb between Peter and the beloved disciple may reflect power struggles in the early church34—still, the overall effect of these narratives on me is exactly opposite from their effect on Crossan. If I were allowed to adapt Crossan’s own description of their effect, I would say, “the stories in the last chapters of the gospels scream at me, not parable, but experiences that were very strange and hard to describe. They shout at me, ‘These people are trying to tell you what happened to them, dummy!’ ” Are there data in the texts to support this impression? Yes, I think that there are. First, while it true that the evangelists in particular and the Scriptures in general do provide us with much that we must classify as metaphor or

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parable, they invariably do so in a way that makes it quite clear that this is the kind of material with which we are dealing. Either it is the case that within the narrative someone like Nathan or Jesus sets out to tell a parable-story or else, as with books such as Ruth, Jonah, Job, Esther, Judith, and Daniel, it is obvious from the style and presentation of the whole that the genre with which we are dealing is a parabolic fiction. Neither of these is the case with the empty tomb narrative in Mark. To be fair to Crossan, of course, he presents an interpretation of the entire Markan passion narrative, not just the part connected with Jesus resurrection, as fictive, a kind of parable created out of meditation on Torah by earlier followers of Jesus, whose “Cross Gospel” then provided the basis for all other accounts of the passion that we have, including the Gospel of Peter. I have discussed that interpretation elsewhere, and suggested why I (and indeed most scholars) reject this somewhat Gilbertian scenario.35 In brief, I find utterly implausible the suggestion that Mark’s passion overall is a parable created out of reflection on Scripture, and equally implausible the idea that Jesus followers would not have known such details as Mark provides (and they are very sparse details) about what had happened in the course of a process that was intended to be public. This said, let me then simply note that within the flow of his narrative, Mark gives us no indication whatever that he wants us to understand the stories of the burial and the empty tomb as an exception to that. On the contrary, and as I have already indicated in my discussion of Mark’s text,36 he seems to present them to us rather carefully in exactly the style in which he presents Jesus’ passion and death—briefly, almost laconically, with many biblical echoes and allusions. He is even, as I have also noted, rather careful to make clear by the insertion into his narrative of no less than three references (15:40, 47; 16:1) that known eyewitnesses whom he names really did see what happened as reflected in key elements of the apostolic formula (“he died, he was buried”), therefore really did know where the tomb was, therefore knew perfectly well where they would be going when the Sabbath was over, and therefore were appropriately dumbfounded at finding the tomb empty.37 In the light of all this, I find it quite impossible to believe—indeed, with all due respect, I find the suggestion bordering on absurd—that Mark then wanted us to understand what he was going to tell us as a parable. On the contrary, that he intended us to understand his story of the tomb as more or less a description of something that happened—at a particular time, in a particular place, that some identifiable people saw—appears to me to be evident. Whether it did happen and whether they really did see it is, of course, another matter. But that that was what Mark intended to tell us appears to me to be beyond reasonable doubt. The second problem encountered by any hypothesis that attempts to explain the accounts of the empty tomb or the resurrection appearances as

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merely parable or legend is that it fails to explain the prominence of Mary of Magdala and the other women. Bultmann, indeed, did attempt to do just that. “As at the Resurrection women here are named as witnesses,” he wrote, “and here they are as little historical as there. They are necessary, because the disciples who had fled could not be made to reappear”38 (my italics). It will not do. Why could the disciples not be “made to reappear”? They actually do “reappear” in John, and Peter and the beloved disciple visit the tomb (John 20:2–10), even though the fourth evangelist is if anything even clearer about the disciples’ generally terrified skulking after the crucifixion than is Mark (John 20:19, 26). Luke, too, still has the disciples hanging about Jerusalem (Luke 24:11–12, 52–53). The truth is, as various critics have pointed out,39 if these narratives had evolved as totally unhistorical inventions in the church at any point in its history, the women would not have played the role in them that they do. Of course, it is possible to show that there were occasions and situations where the witness of women was acceptable in Greco-Roman antiquity, and some scholars have done that.40 But the general direction in which the evidence points and the ancient world’s general preference for male witness where it was available remain obvious and indisputable. Especially is it true, moreover, that in the sphere of religion, women were commonly regarded as more gullible than men, and as inclined to excess and fantasy.41 Within the New Testament itself, as we have already noticed, Luke 24:11 (that the women’s story struck the apostles as “an idle tale”) clearly reflects an awareness of that prejudice, as does the longer ending of Mark (16:11). Passages such as 1 Timothy 4:7 and 2 Timothy 3:6–7 provide us with examples of simple acquiescence in it. Not for nothing did Celsus, the pagan critic of Christianity, feel that he had made a point when he noted that the empty tomb story derived from “a hysterical (paroistros42) female, as you say” (Origen, Against Celsus 2.55). The fact, then, that the gospels claim the initial witness of women must suggest that the claim was not simply invented but had a basis in events. That granted, a third factor, also involving the women, must now be taken into consideration, namely, the differences in the different traditions about the women. Granted that references to them “reflect a desire to connect the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus with accredited witnesses,” nevertheless, “they cannot be regarded as inventions, for otherwise they would have agreed more closely.”43 It is, indeed, hard to see why Matthew and Luke bother (each in his own way) to change Mark’s list of witnesses unless for a reason that was to do with the purpose—to furnish the gospel with accredited witnesses. But just how would these changes have affected that purpose? Vincent Taylor’s explanation still appears to be the only one that is actually plausible: “Naturally, at different centres of Palestinian Christianity the lists would differ. All agreed that Mary of

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Magdala was one of the number, but at one centre the names of local women would be remembered, and at another centre those of others. Luke’s (Caesarean) tradition preserved the names of Joanna and Susanna, Mark’s (Jerusalem) tradition a second Mary and Salome.”44 Matthew, on this view, will have omitted Salome, because his community did not know her. In other words, as Richard Bauckham has suggested, the differences in the women named at various points in the evangelists’ narratives, far from being grounds for not taking them seriously, may actually indicate “the scrupulous care with which the Gospels present the women as witnesses.”45 That “the Evangelists were careful to name precisely the women who were well known to them as witnesses to these crucial events in the origins of the Christian movement” cannot be demonstrated, but, as Bauckham’s discussion shows, it is a possibility and has the advantage that it does seem to explain “the variations among their lists of women as no other proposal has succeeded in doing.”46 Fourth, while—as I have already indicated—I do not claim that the empty tomb or the appearance stories are unvarnished records of “facts,” and while I concede without hesitation that they are shot through with rhetoric, with metaphor, and (of course) with the concerns of those who told them, nevertheless, I am struck by the fact that none of the stories seems really to be dominated by the kinds of concern that might have been expected if these narratives were merely parables or metaphors composed to make a point. On the contrary, there is about them a quality of unexpectedness that repeatedly militates against this. Thus, I have already referred to various suggestions that events in the resurrection narratives may reflect power plays and claims to authority in the early church.47 As I have indicated, I grant that there may be elements of truth in this. Yet, as I have also indicated, we must beware of exaggeration, for even in this respect the resurrection narratives remain to a remarkable extent, as Archbishop Rowan Williams puts it, “ideologically under-determined.”48 That is to say, while we may think we can see how special interests have influenced their shape and even their details, still the stories themselves, particularly as regards their repeated notes of confusion, uncertainty, and failure to recognize, stubbornly resist being absorbed into such interests and could even be said to work against them, for they constantly insist that the Risen One is neither possessed, understood, nor even properly obeyed by any of those who follow him.49 Fifthly, it has been observed that the resurrection traditions do, in a sense, provide a “happy ending”50 to the gospel narrative, and we all like happy endings. Of course, this is to some extent true. Nonetheless, even in this respect the narratives remain somewhat unexpected, in that they are hardly “happy

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endings” of the “and they all lived happily ever after” variety. Rather they challenge, puzzle, and provoke. The risen Jesus is never presented as one who simply walked into a room or along a path so that everyone knew who he was and realized that things were all right after all. Rather, these are stories of one who is at first not even recognized, but then—through some gesture, a manner of speaking, a manner of presiding at table—is recognized. They are stories of distress, confusion, and misunderstanding, followed by gradual recognition and only then by dawning joy. And even that dawning joy never lacks new challenges, new tasks, and new promises that bring with them new concerns and uncertainties. It is not for nothing that the women experience tromos kai ekstasis at the words of the “young man,” or that they leave in silence because they are filled with awe (Mark 16:7–8; cf. Matt 28:10, 18–20; Luke 24:46–49; Acts 1:8; John 20:17, 21–23, 15–23). In connection with this last observation, I find striking a further point made by N. T. Wright, namely, that while the various appearance stories are very different from each other—there seems little reason to suppose that, say, the Emmaus story influenced or was influenced by the story of Mary Magdalene at the tomb or the story of the disciples and the risen Lord on the beach— nevertheless, they do all have one feature in common, a feature that sets them strikingly apart from discussions of the resurrection even as early as 1 Corinthians 15 or Romans 6, let alone later discussions such as 1 Peter. It is a feature, moreover, that seems by its very nature bound to be early. It is this: the appearance stories do not centrally link Jesus rising to the Christians’ own hope of resurrection; rather they tell how those who experienced them heard in them a call to action. As N. T. Wright puts it, the appearance stories do not come out as saying, “Jesus is risen, therefore we’re going to heaven, or therefore we’re going to be raised. They say Jesus is raised, therefore God’s new creation has begun and we’ve got a job to do” (my italics).51 In other words, the first Christians were involved in what we spoke of in an earlier chapter as a “collaborative eschatology.”52 Sixthly and finally—but hardly of least importance—we have a problem that I indicated earlier.53 If the experience of the first Christians was the kind of experience that Bultmann, Borg, Sawicki, and Crossan suggest—visionary and internal, simply the conversion of their hearts to God’s truth and the real meaning of Jesus life and death—then why on earth did they not say so? The language to describe such experiences was clearly available, so why did the first Christians not use it? Why did they choose instead to use the language of resurrection, words such as egeirō and anistēmi, words which, as we have noted, were normally used in quite different connections, and whose use here was therefore inviting misunderstanding of experiences that would, in fact, have

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been perfectly acceptable to many in the ancient world who found “resurrection” ridiculous?54 So we must respectfully reject Marianne Sawicki’s suggestion that the resurrection tradition began with the disciples’ awareness that Jesus halakah lived on. Indeed, the very narrative that she cites to illustrate how this transformation might have come about actually illustrates precisely why we must doubt that it did. The story of the martyrdom of Rabbi Hananiah ben Teradion is a moving and powerful narrative of faith, which is to say, it is the narrative of a martyr’s victorious death and his sure hope of resurrection. A bath-kol declares of him that he has “been assigned to the world to come” (b. Abod. Zar. 18a). But that is precisely the problem for Sawicki’s hypothesis. The story of Rabbi Hananiah differs from the story of Jesus at exactly the point where, for her analysis to be correct, it needs to be the same: for it is very clearly a story about Rabbi Hananiah’s sure and certain hope of resurrection. It is manifestly not a story about Hananiah’s resurrection already! That is the difference between it and the stories about Jesus. What Rabbi Hananiah’s story does demonstrate, however, is that if the Christians had wanted to say about Jesus what Sawicki claims they wanted to say, then there were certainly available to them the concepts and vocabulary with which to say it. The fact remains, that was not what they said. Indeed, I feel it is owed not merely to Christianity but also to Judaism to go further. I must ask, what is it that we suppose is or was wrong with this hope that God will indeed bestow upon the faithful the gift of resurrection in the Age to Come—a hope that has sustained faithful Israel for thousands of years, even through pogroms and death camps, and continues to sustain her, a hope that apparently our Lord himself was not ashamed to share (Mark 12:18–27; John 11:23–24)? Why did something need to be added in his case? And why, of all possibilities, was the something that needed to be added a story of his resurrection? As we have already noted, and as Sawicki herself points out, the idea of resurrection that the Jews held did not in fact fit all that easily with what was claimed for Jesus.55 There was, as we have seen, discontinuity as well as continuity (or, as Wright and Crossan put it, there was “mutation”56) in the Christian version of the resurrection faith. All that granted, why did the first Christians bring “resurrection” into their proclamation at all (other than as future hope)— unless they genuinely believed that something had happened that could only be spoken of in this way? And if we concede that, then naturally we must ask just what might have happened that led them to such a conviction—and we are back where we started. These, then, are reasons for doubting that the empty tomb and appearance narratives can adequately or properly be understood as parables or metaphors for a visionary experience or a birth of new insight.

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In sum, it seems apparent that none of the five naturalistic “explanations” of what happened at the first Easter will really work. The three former—deceit, deception, or resuscitation—are ridiculous; the two latter—hallucination or veridical vision—do not account for the data. So . . . just how do we explain the rise of the Easter faith? The explanation that the Christians themselves gave has two obvious advantages: (1) it covers the data, in that it would adequately explain their extraordinary behavior and their extraordinary explanation of it; and (2) it appears to work, in that generations of otherwise rather ordinary people who have accepted it have thereby found themselves able to lead lives of meaning and grace. In most areas, the fact that a hypothesis covers the data and appears to work is generally taken to be serious evidence in its favor. On the other hand, the explanation that the Christians gave has, as we have said, the serious disadvantage of flying in the face of normal human experience. So we are at an impasse, and beyond that impasse I do not believe any investigation that is merely historical in the normal sense of that expression can take us.57 I am reminded of Sherlock Holmes’ famous dictum: “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”58 The logic of the dictum is sound enough, and the assertion may even be useful—for just so long as we are agreed as to what is “impossible.” But what if we are not agreed? Ultimately, indeed, the question is theological: in other words, in what kind of God does one believe, if any?59 If one believes in no God or in a God who does not, would not, or could not interfere in the processes of history in any way that might transcend its laws as we normally experience them; if one believes that the death of any individual is, at least as far as this world is concerned, the end of that individual, invariably, inevitably, and without possible exception—why then, evidently, it follows that the Christian claim is impossible.60 In which case, we are bound to go on looking for an alternative explanation, however improbable. This way of reasoning is perfectly exemplified by Hastings Rashdall, the philosopher of “ideal utilitarianism.” Speaking of the likelihood of “the reanimation, or the sudden transformation into something not quite material and yet not quite spiritual, of a really dead body,” it would, he said, “involve the violation of the best ascertained laws of physics, chemistry, and physiology. Were the testimony fifty times stronger than it is, any hypothesis would be more possible than that” (my emphasis).61 Exactly. That way of reasoning, presumably, is what lies behind those various theories about the resurrection of Jesus—some of them quite remarkably improbable!—touched on earlier in this chapter.62

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If, on the other hand, one believes in a God who might act in and through the universe of causality and physicality in ways that utterly transcend our present understanding and experience of that universe—and that is, after all, the God in whom Muslims, Jews, and Christians (at least in the full and classic sense of those terms) believe—then the early Christians’ claim, which they did indeed frame with remarkable persistence and consistency, is possible. Not thereby proven, of course, in any kind of scientific or legal sense; historical questions are in any case not susceptible to that kind of proof. But the Christian claim is possible. The acceptance—even the provisional acceptance—of that claim would, of course, still leave many unanswered questions, as the first Christians themselves were clearly aware. One of those questions, and to my thinking by far the most important, is “So what?” Let us turn to that in my next and final chapter.

10 So What? A Partially Unscientific Postscript

Let us, for the sake of argument, grant the premise: two thousand or so years ago, Jesus was raised from the dead just as early Christians testified. Well, one might say, that must have been very nice for him. But so what? What did those around him make of that? What might an event such as that have to do with us? We noted early in this study that a first result of the apostolic experience of the Risen Christ invariably involved a call to witness to him and his resurrection: to preach, to proclaim Christ crucified and risen. That, in essence, is what we assert whenever we speak of the church as “apostolic”—that is, we speak of it as “sent”: sent by God to witness to the One who was crucified and raised from the dead. But why? What is it about that death and resurrection, what is it about the Risen One himself, that makes his story important for the world? Why should the proclamation of that story be called “gospel,” “good news,” for any but Jesus himself ? To put the matter another way, and to make use of a distinction made by John Dominic Crossan,1 the literary-critical and historicalcritical questions that we have so far considered—Was the resurrection an event that happened (as we say) “literally” or “really”? Or was the resurrection a metaphor? Was it a parable? Was it a way of describing a spiritual experience? Was it none of those things? Was it really just a lie? Or was it a mistake?—all these are questions about the mode of the resurrection. But for our discussion to be complete, we need also to discuss its meaning, because whatever precisely the

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resurrection was, those who first proclaimed it clearly thought that it meant something. It had consequences. If they had not thought that, presumably they would not have talked about it so much, and they surely would not have felt called to go out and proclaim it, often at considerable personal cost. So we can hardly claim to have discussed properly even the historical problems surrounding the resurrection if we do not consider what some at least of Jesus’ followers seem to have thought were its meaning and consequences and why they thought that. The fact is, what the first Christians said the resurrection of Jesus meant is in its own way as striking as what they said had happened.2 Let us then recall the datum from which we started, the datum that needed to be explained: a group of Jews, together with a number of ex-pagans who had joined them, whose way of living, worship, self-explanation and stories at every point centered on a claim about the “raising” of Jesus of Nazareth. But why? What was it that caused the followers of Jesus not merely to claim that he had risen from the dead but to understand his rising in such a radical way that they were led to found what would, in effect, be a new religion? To answer that question, we need to go back to an element in the original proclamation that I named in the introductory part of this study3 and that we have seen as a consistent element in all our witnesses: that the risen Jesus who, so his disciples claimed, encountered them “in power”4 was the same Jesus whom they had known and followed in Galilee, the same Jesus who had been one among them, notoriously sharing table fellowship with sinners, the same Jesus who had spoken of the coming of God’s kingdom and invited them to share in its work, and the same Jesus who had then been crucified.5 Karl Barth stated the matter with his usual precision: What the Evangelists really know and say is simply that the disciples saw and heard Jesus again after His death, and that as they saw and heard Him they recognized Him, and that they recognized Him on the basis of his identity with the One whom they had known before. And they say this because it is their particular intention to say it.6 Precisely. Granted this (and I honestly do not see how a reasonable survey of the witnesses can deny it) we may go on to note that not only the Evangelists but the canonical writers generally seem—with, of course, varieties of emphasis and interest—to point to certain distinguishable though evidently related consequences of this identity of Jesus of Nazareth and the Risen One. These together make up what I understand to be for them overall the “meaning and consequence” of the resurrection.

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1. The Resurrection, Jesus, and God Granted the assertion that the Jesus whom God had “raised in power” was the same Jesus who had been crucified, it is important to note just why he had been crucified, at least in the opinion of those who make that assertion. According to virtually all traditions, Christian and Jewish, the Sanhedrin accused Jesus of blasphemy, a claim that appears to me overwhelmingly likely to be correct. There has of late been a movement among some critics to suggest that the arrest and subsequent death of Jesus had nothing to do with the Sanhedrin and the Romans thought the whole thing up by themselves, but on the whole that suggestion, though well intentioned, is, I think—and as I have argued in more detail elsewhere—fantastical.7 It is obviously weighted by concerns that are not part of the historical question and collapses under the sheer weight of evidence against it. The fact is, every ancient tradition and authority, Christian and Jewish, asserts more or less that the Sanhedrin condemned Jesus as a false prophet or blasphemer. Indeed they could all be wrong, but it seems unlikely. When opponents agree—and especially opponents as bitter as these became— then anything they agree about is probably the case. In their descriptions of what happened before the Sanhedrin, the evangelists are vague about details. This is as we would expect since no one among Jesus’ followers was present at the process. They also differ in their emphases. This, again, is as we would expect since they are different writers with their own concerns and interests. Despite those differences, all four evangelists seem to be more or less agreed on the main issues involved. These are twofold. One was that Jesus had spoken against the temple and, moreover, associated himself with its destiny (Mark 14:57–58 // Matt 26:58; cf. Mark 11:15–19 // Matt 21:12–13 // Luke 19:45–48 [John 2:13–22]). With Mark’s somewhat scornful aside— “But even on this point their testimony did not agree” (Mark 14:59)—he seems almost to want to remove this particular accusation from serious consideration. Yet Mark himself has already told us that Jesus had indeed made threatening gestures against the temple’s practice (Mark 11:15–18) and spoken threatening words against it (Mark 13:1–2), and that the priests had reacted with entirely predictable hostility (Mark 11:15–19 // Matt 21:12–17 // Luke 19:45–48; Mark 13:1–2 // Matt 24:1–2 // Luke 21:5–6; John 2:13–21). And there can be no doubt that for many—indeed surely most—of his fellow Jews, Jesus’ actions and words, simply as Mark described them, would have been, as E. P. Sanders says, “deeply offensive.”8 The other issue was that Jesus did not merely prophesy the coming of God’s kingdom—that was standard prophetic stuff—but that he spoke of God’s

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purposes in the coming kingdom and judgment in such a way as uniquely to associate himself with their fulfillment (Mark 14:61–62 par. Matt 27:63–65 par. Luke 22:67–71; cf. Mark 9:38 par. Luke 9:49–50; Mark 10:29–30 par. Matt 19:29-30 par. Luke 18:29-30; Mark 12:1–12 par. Matt 21:33–46, par. Luke 20:9–19; Mark 12:35–37a par. Matt 22:41–46 par. Luke 20:41–44; Mark 13:31–32 par. Matt 24:35-36 par. Luke 21:32-33: Mark 14:3–9 par. Matt 26:6–13; Mark 14:21 par. Matt 26:24 par. Luke 22:22; Luke 4:16–21; John 1:51, 5:22–23, 19:7b). Closely linked with this, moreover, we can hardly ignore—nor is it easy to imagine that the Sanhedrin will have ignored—certain other well-attested aspects of Jesus’ ministry, most strikingly his claim that sinners such as tax collectors and harlots would precede the righteous into God’s kingdom, apparently implying that their mere association with himself was enough to assure for them the forgiveness of their sins (Matt 21:31; Mark 2:1–12 par. Matt 9:1–8 par. Luke 5:17–26; Matt 26:28; Luke 7:36–50; John 3:16–21). Again, E. P. Sanders goes to the heart of the matter: “Jesus apparently did not require them to make restitution and to indicate their repentance by offering sacrifice.” Therefore, “he was probably seen as having challenged the adequacy of the Mosaic covenant, not because there was some part which he explicitly opposed, but because he thought that its requirements could be waived for those who accepted him.” This was a claim whose egocentricity “must have struck many of his contemporaries as impious.”9 Scholars of various schools of thought suggest that Jesus will have appeared to his contemporaries in the guise of a prophet. That being so, such claims as these could be summed up in the charge that he was a false prophet, a deceiver who was “leading the people astray” (John 7:12), and it is, indeed, in terms of false prophecy that Jesus’ condemnation is described in the baraita in the Babylonian Talmud: he is one who “enticed Israel to apostasy” (b. Sanh. 43a; also 107b). So what happened? What happened was that Jesus died violently. He died, moreover, not the honorable death of a warrior or a martyr for the faith but the dishonorable death of a felon condemned by a Jewish court and was buried (as even the accounts composed by his own followers probably concede) “in shame,” without mourning or family tomb.10 He died under a curse (Gal 3:13). Evidently, then, God had rejected him, and he and his claims to divine authority must indeed have been blasphemous. He died, according to what was reported to be his own testimony, “forsaken” by God (Mark 15:34 // Matt 27:46). That was the end of his story. No wonder, then, that faithful Jews like Saul of Tarsus would consider that any who spoke of him as God’s Messiah were blasphemers like him and ought to be silenced since they, like him, were demeaning the power and glory of the God of Israel (Gal 1:13–14; compare 1 Cor 1:23).

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But what if God then vindicated Jesus? What if God raised him “in power”? What then? That, surely, would change everything. It was not that they had been entirely wrong about Jesus. In many ways they had been right. He did claim for himself divine prerogatives. He did die an accursed death. But if God now vindicated him, then presumably his claims to divine prerogatives—those very claims that were correctly judged as false prophecy, as blasphemous, if not true—must be taken seriously. Then, apparently, Jesus must actually have that role in judgment and in the coming of God’s kingdom and in the granting of God’s forgiveness that he had claimed, and on his lips those claims were not blasphemy. “God confirms by raising Jesus that his actions were carried out under God’s command, and were God’s action.”11 This much is implicit in Mark’s entire narrative and, as we have seen, especially so in the tromos and ekstasis with which the women greet the mysterium tremendum that encounters them in the news of his resurrection.12 What is implicit in Mark is, moreover, explicit in our other witnesses, both the earlier witness of Paul and the later witness of Matthew, Luke, and John. Paul, the earliest of our witnesses is, as we have seen, particularly clear. We have noted how, in 1 Corinthians 15:27–28 he spells out, in his own way, precisely the point that Nicaea would eventually make by means of the homoousion—that the subjection of all things to the Son involves not two rival divine principles but the sovereignty of the one God who is truly glorified in the Son. We noted that even these remarks must also be understood in the light of Paul’s repeated and (apparently) utterly characteristic assertion that “the Lord Jesus Christ” together with “God the Father” is the source of “grace and peace”—an extraordinary assertion for a Pharisaic Jew. Even more strikingly, Paul’s assertion in 1 Corinthians stands alongside passages such as that in Philippians 2:9 wherein Paul (in the view of most commentators, quoting from an older source) reminds his hearers that God has given to Christ Jesus “the Name that is above every name.” As we have also noted, for a Pharisaic Jew there was only one name that could possibly be described in that way, and it was the name of God.13 As for our later witnesses, as we have seen, each spells out the divinity of Christ in connection with the resurrection in his own way. Matthew has the declaration that the risen Jesus now has “all authority” in heaven and on earth.14 Luke ends with the risen Jesus being exalted to divine glory, after receiving that tribute which may properly only be offered to God: “and they worshipped him” (24:52).15 John concludes with Thomas’ address to the Risen One and the ultimate Christological assertion, “my Lord and my God.”16 Other New Testament witnesses whom we have not so far examined speak in the same vein. The unknown author to the Hebrews distinguishes utterly

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between the preexistent and exalted Son and the angels, placing the Son in his exaltation far above the angels:17 He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has obtained is more excellent than theirs. For to what angel did God ever say, “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son”? And again, when he brings the first-born into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.” (Heb 1:3–6)18 The seer of Patmos hears of “the living one who was dead” that he is “the first and the last,” which is to say that he is “alpha and omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end”—all of which are, of course, ways of saying that he bears the divine name, the name of God (Rev 1:17; 22:13).19 So naturally “the lamb” receives in heaven equal worship with “the one that sits upon the throne” (Rev 5:13). Catholic Christianity has claimed that by the homoousion of the NicenoConstantinopolitan formularies it elucidated what the New Testament already implied. That claim is well-based.20 There is a line to be drawn from the empty tomb and the appearances of the Risen One, through Philippians 2:6, the endings to the four gospels, Hebrews 1.3–6, Revelation 1.17, 5.16, and 22.13, and so to Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon. Jesus’ resurrection leads to Christology, and so to a specifically Christian theology. That, according to the consistent testimony of the various New Testament witnesses, is the first “meaning and consequence” of Jesus’ resurrection.

2. The Resurrection and Justification by Grace through Faith According to the unanimous testimony of our witnesses, the Jesus who was raised in power and was seen first by the women and then by the men was the same Jesus who had been crucified. Now we need to ask not why was he crucified but who crucified him? I trust my readers will allow me to skip the self-serving rhetoric that has characterized much Christian history: “it was the Jews’ fault” or, in the more recent but equally silly version, “it was the imperialist Romans’ fault”21—in other words, “it was the fault of people who were not like us and with whom therefore we need not identify.” On the contrary, what

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I find striking whenever I read through the canonical passion narratives is this: despite the fact that those narratives were written out of a conviction that Pilate and the Sanhedrin between them had committed the most terrible crime in history, and although they were written by members of a social group that was often under severe social pressure for its adherence to the victim of that crime, still the narratives’ actual references to those who had been responsible for what happened are really rather restrained. We noted earlier a certain generosity of spirit that allows Mark, who does not seem to think that Joseph of Arimathea was a disciple of Jesus and does seem to imply that he had consented to Jesus’ death, nevertheless to characterize him as one who was “looking for the kingdom of God” (15:43).22 The fact is, the evangelists leave us free to read through their accounts and conclude that most of those involved were in general quite good people. Of course I do not mean they were very good. They were not heroically good. But at least, let us say, they were as good as I am and perhaps most of my readers—which means, of course, good enough, at least for most purposes. Averagely good!23 Let us consider Pilate. What sort of a man was he? If we put not only the canonical traditions but all the sources of information that we have about him together—which means also Philo and Josephus—and if we do our best to discount the various writers’ particular concerns and prejudices, what do we have? I would say that in the situation that faced him on Good Friday, we have the classic example of a man faced with a job too big for him (as a former Principal of Salisbury Theological College, the Reverend Harold Wilson, used to put it, “he was the classic example of a one-ulcer man in a two-ulcer job”). Let us try to look at the gospel record as it might appear from Pilate’s point of view. Faced with a likely riot, he did what he was supposed to do. He kept the peace. That in his mode of doing so he is described as having, as we say, “cut a few corners”—a useful metaphor for saying that he seems to have preferred expediency to honor and convenience to justice, and all in the name of security—that, as I say, means that he is described as behaving no better, but certainly no worse, than have millions of well-respected politicians and civil servants before him and after him to this very day. We live at present in a society where senior officials of a former administration are prepared to justify what is evidently a war crime, namely torture, on the ground that it worked (a claim, it must be conceded, that is in itself dubious and is denied by many who would seem to be in a position to know). In such company as that, we may well feel that Pilate is by no means chief among sinners. Then what happened? From Pilate’s point of view, what happened on his orders was the routine execution of an alleged messianic agitator. Certainly it was on his orders. Nothing can get him off that particular hook. He alone had

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authority to give those orders. But—notably—he appears only to have crucified the leader, not his followers. That was a little unusual. Perhaps Pilate was not quite so cruel as Philo suggested, or perhaps, given the volatility of the situation, Pilate was being prudent. In either case, either his restraint or his commonsense deserve some approval.24 Then let us consider the Sanhedrin. They were certainly “good” men, just as “good” as the men and women who form our contemporary church councils, congresses, or conventions, and many of them, we may suspect, rather better. They were, after all, people like Saul of Tarsus, “circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; . . . as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Phil 3:5–6)—Saul who, before what happened on the Damascus road, apparently approved of everything that the Sanhedrin had done. Let us think, finally, of the man in charge of the Sanhedrin—Caiaphas. What was in it all for him? Surely the most important concern for Caiaphas and his colleagues in the Sanhedrin during that first Holy Week was the preservation of the Jerusalem temple—and surely that was expected to be their most important concern. It went with the job. So when Jesus arrived in the city with an excited crowd of followers and spoke words against the temple and made symbolic gestures against it, what was Caiaphas supposed to do? As Helen K. Bond points out, “the smooth running of the festival had to be protected at all costs; the thought of Roman intervention—with, at best, pollution of the holy place and, at worst, destruction of some or all of the temple—was too terrible to imagine. Jesus threatened everything that Caiaphas held most dear; the high priest would have regarded him as a troublemaker, a false prophet, and deceiver of the people, and would have had no scruples in handing him over to Pilate.”25 But these, from the Christian point of view, are the villains of the piece. What then of the good people in our narrative? What of those who claimed to love Jesus and to be his followers? What of the Twelve? What of his disciples? Certainly, according to our witnesses, they do not participate in bringing about his death—well, actually, one of them does—but most of them do not. Yet even though they do not actively betray him, still they do not stand by him. As a body, when the time comes for Jesus to die, they are nowhere to be found, being, as J. D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield memorably put it, “about as much use to him as a hole in the head.”26 Is there anything to be set on the credit side? There are, I suppose, the faithful women—precisely those whom their society would in general take least seriously as witnesses or as adherents. They stuck by him. If the fourth evangelist is right, there was one male disciple who turned up at the cross with the

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women, and there was at the last minute a gesture of rough kindness from some of the soldiers, the same wretched squaddies (as my father—a British soldier himself—would have called them) who had been given the dirty job of executing him. And that was it. Overall, then, the story the evangelists hand on to us is of nothing but enmity and condemnation from those good people who despite their goodness nonetheless did not believe or understand him, and betrayal and failure on the part of those other good people who claimed that they did believe him but still did not stand by him. What then do our witnesses, our storytellers the evangelists, lead us to conclude from all this? What is the message when he rises victorious from the dead? If God had vindicated Jesus and raised him in power, then all these good people—in some ways representing the best the world then had to offer, Jewish faith and Roman order—these good people had put to death the Son of God, and most of those other good people, his followers who professed to love him, had fled. Evidently then, the first thing we have to conclude on the basis of this account is that human goodness, Saul and Caiaphas’ religious goodness, average-Roman-civil-service goodness, the people of God’s goodness, the emperor’s goodness, and even the goodness of Jesus’ own disciples—in other words, goodness like mine and yours—was not good enough. That is the preliminary and obvious conclusion. And if we were making the story up, one could understand if it were to go on to give us essentially the same message as we find at the end of Esther, where those on God’s side, when their time of vindication comes, take an entirely understandable vengeance upon their enemies (9:1–16). If Jesus has been raised, then surely it is now payback time, and certainly Jesus’ enemies and betrayers will face a heavy reckoning for what they have done! But that is exactly what does not happen in this narrative. The conclusion of this narrative is forgiveness—a forgiveness vividly realized in Jesus’ acceptance and reinstatement of the apostolic group that had denied him, and hence his implicit acceptance of the sinful church that they represent.27 That much is clear even from Mark’s brief account (16:7). But then in the other three evangelists the proffered reconciliation extends much further. The evangelists are clear that in entering into the fellowship of the Crucified and Risen One, one enters into a sphere and style of life that in its entirety involves and is involved with the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4 par.; 2.1–12, 13–17 par.; Matt 1:21; 26:28; Luke 1:77; Acts 2:38; John 20:22–23). And those who are Jesus’ people—his forgiven and reinstated people—are to be witnesses to this forgiveness, not just to each other, not just to Israel, but to any who will listen, to Jews and Samaritans and Gentiles and so on to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:14; cf. Matt 28:19).

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No wonder Saul, the good Pharisee who had approved of Jesus’ death, when confronted by the risen “Christ-in-power” found his universe turned upside down. And it was the intellect of Saul-who-is-also-Paul that was not content merely to experience this nor even just to tell the story but was driven in some sense to work it out and to describe what it meant. He tells us, “whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (3:6–7). The phrasing is extravagant, yet it is surely not hard to see how the resurrection of Jesus, once Paul was convinced it had happened, would have brought him to that. Considering where his own “goodness” had led him and those who thought like him, it surely seemed natural to Saul, now a follower of the crucified Nazarene, to conclude that human goodness, even goodness in obedience to the Law, was in the last analysis useless: “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified by God’s grace as a gift” (Rom 3:24). And given the appalling crime against God to which Paul’s righteousness and the righteousness of those like him had led them, and the fact that God had nonetheless called him through grace—“For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am!” (1 Cor 15:9)—he could surely come to no other conclusion than that God’s will to save must finally be unconditional and unlimited. “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (Rom 11:32; cf. 2 Cor 5:19). As Charles Wesley was to put it some centuries later, “’tis mercy all, immense and free, for O, my God, it found out me!”28 In other words, we must also draw a line from the resurrection of Jesus to God in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor 5:1929), and so to the doctrine of justification by grace though faith: But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast. (Eph 2:4–9) It is Paul and the Pauline literature that spell this out for us with peculiar clarity. But, as we have seen, our other witnesses all testify to it, even if less directly. Christianity is then, like Judaism and Islam, a religion of God’s grace. Christianity is unique in that it proclaims that grace, still God’s grace and God’s

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work, through the person and work of the risen Christ, who comes in grace and acceptance even to those who have failed him, even to those who have crucified him.30 This is the second meaning and consequence of Jesus’ resurrection.

3. The Resurrection of Jesus and the General Resurrection of the Dead The fact that Jesus was raised from the dead was a pledge of the resurrection hope not just for him but for all. Although this claim was not, perhaps,31 asserted in the very earliest part of the tradition, it was, nonetheless, asserted quite soon, and then unequivocally. Paul, as we saw in our examination of 1 Corinthians 15, is adamant on the subject. “For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ, but each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ” (1 Cor 15:22–23). “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thess 4:14). “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself ” (Phil 3:20–21). The writer to the Hebrews is equally clear about the link between Christ’s death and resurrection and ours: We see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons and daughters to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering. (Heb 2:8b–15)32 So is the Petrine tradition: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Pet 1:3–5)33 The same point seems to be the main intention behind Matthew’s interpretative gloss on the tradition in his account of Christ’s death: “The tombs also

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were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many” (Matt 27:52–53).34 Again Jesus is, as the seer of Revelation puts it, “first born from the dead” (Rev 1:5)—but not therefore the last! Quite the contrary! John Dominic Crossan is, I think, quite right to see all this as crucial, and even to tie it to the traditional “harrowing (that is, the ‘crushing,’ ‘pulverizing,’ ‘ploughing under,’ and hence ‘plundering’35) of hell,”36 which is one way in which medieval Christians pictured Christ’s victory over evil at his death. It will be noted, moreover, that Hebrews, with its statement that Christ’s work is “for everyone” (huper pantos; Heb 2:9)37 and Matthew, with his references to the “saints” of Israel, see this link between Christ’s death and resurrection and the rest of humanity’s hope for resurrection extending far beyond the Christian community. So, evidently, does Paul, in the passage that I have already discussed: “For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Cor 15:21–22).38 We should make prayers and thanksgivings “on behalf of all people (pantōn anthrōpōn),” said someone later writing in Paul’s name, because “God our Savior . . . wills that all people (pantas anthrōpous) shall be saved and come to know the truth” (1 Tim 2:1, 4).39 For all its horrific visions of judgment, the final prayer of the seer of Revelation is that “the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all” (Rev 22:21).40 Indeed, if there is not finally in the gospel a promise for all but only for those who have been baptized into Christ, then one is bound to ask (as, implicitly, does John Dominic Crossan), “How then does the gospel maintain God’s justice, both as regards the creation as a whole, and in particular as regards Israel?” This is precisely the question that exercised Paul in Romans 9–11, where he reflected upon those in Israel who had not believed in Christ, and came finally to two conclusions: first, at the end of all things, “all Israel will be saved”; and second, the gospel therefore has implications that go far beyond not only the church but even beyond Israel, namely that, “God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (Rom 11:26, 32).41 But at this point we must go further. We must refer again to the “transformed physicality” of Jesus’ resurrection. I said at an earlier point in this discussion that I considered that purely “spiritual” or “interior” views of the resurrection, however lofty or inspiring in themselves, leave unanswered some serious questions, both theological and ethical, and that I would return to those questions.42 Here is the point to do so. I regard such views as Lake’s and Borg’s as manifestations of a tendency that Anthony Kelly aptly describes as “an enduring theological temptation,” namely, the temptation to “reduce the

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phenomenon of the resurrection to an experience of the new gift of the Spirit.”43 Why do such views constitute a temptation? They are a temptation, because they fail fully to address the question of God’s justice. Of one thing we may be sure: it is in this world, this physical world, where much evil is done. It is bodies that are starved and raped and beaten and tortured and abused. It is in their bodies that Jews and others were enslaved and murdered at Auschwitz and Buchenwald and similar places. It is the bodies of Japanese men, women, and children that were destroyed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is in their bodies that African American men and women were humiliated and abused for generations. It is in their bodies that living animals are farmed as if they were products off a conveyor belt. It is in its body that the good earth is strip-mined and left in desolation. What are the evils of racism or sexism or homophobia about if they are not about bodies? What do they involve if not the claim that because my body is in some way different from your body, that makes me a better person than you, or else perhaps a worse person than you, and it even gives me the right to oppress or abuse you, or you the right to oppress or abuse me—and all this just because our bodies are different? What of martyrs? What of all those lovely women and men who died for the faith, who died to honor God and God’s Law? Their souls are in the hand of God, yes, but it was in their bodies that they suffered. What then of the body? Israel’s hope that people might be raised from death in the fullness of their humanity cannot, I believe, simply be explained as a response to grief over the death of martyrs or suffering for God’s cause.44 But as we have noted, Israel’s hope does, nonetheless, offer consolation to such grief. And it is in line with this aspect of Israel’s hope that we find Jesus’ followers likewise affirming that his resurrection did indeed involve the human totality, which is to say, it involved things “spiritual,” yes indeed—“the soul,” if we will—but also the redemption of his body, the body that had been tortured to death upon the cross. The stories of the empty tomb and the other appearances in which Jesus (the wounded Jesus, still bearing his scars) ate and drank and was touched and embraced—those stories insist that God’s final redemption of all things was (and therefore is and will be) neither beyond our universe of space and time nor in abandonment of it but has embraced it and already begins to work its transformation.45 This, incidentally, is why I think that Marianne Sawicki is right: “the Christian doctrine of bodily resurrection offers more than words, more than literary motifs. It is a way of life that cherishes the human body and resists whatever threatens the bodies of children, women and men on this planet.”46 Yet even this is to state the matter only negatively. There is indeed positive joy in biblical affirmations that God looked at the order of creation in all its

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variety and its flagrant materiality—plants and trees and birds and beasts— and “saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). In the film Chariots of Fire,47 there is a moment of high drama which is also a moment of deep theological insight. The Scottish runner Eric Liddell48 is talking with his sister Jennie, who fears that his athletic prowess is no longer just fun but is leading him away from his work as a missionary in China and away from God. ERIC “I’ve decided. I’m going back to China. The missionary service has accepted me.” JENNIE

“Oh, I’m so pleased!”

“But I’ve got a lot of running to do first. Jennie . . . Jennie, you’ve got to understand. I believe that God made me for a purpose. For China. But he also made me fast. And when I run . . . I feel his pleasure. To give it up would be to hold him in contempt. You were right. It’s not just fun. To win is to honor him.”

ERIC

Exactly! We honor God when we are true to ourselves, and God made us to be, among other things, physical. Moreover God has honored that physicality not only by pronouncing it “very good” but also by becoming it (Gen 1:31; John 1:14). I was recently reminded of that scene in a very different kind of setting—a concert by the great Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli in the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto.49 She was, as one would expect, superb throughout, but toward the end of the first half of her program, when she came to sing Rossini’s Nacqui all’affanno, she seemed to catch a new fire. She was indeed quite glorious. Whether consciously or not (she and God know that), she radiated joy in the sheer physical act of singing, a joy that filled the auditorium. And as I recall that joy, I remember then and find myself now applying to her singing the expression that in Chariots of Fire was used of Eric Liddell’s running: I felt God’s pleasure.50 Experiences such as these are, I suspect, glimpses—of course no more than glimpses, fleeting and (by me, certainly) easily missed—of the joy that various biblical writers look for in the resurrection life, a life that is to be not less but more truly physical, a life in which the Magdalene shall indeed be able to “cling” to her Lord with every part of her being, a life that shall thus fully merit God’s own praise that it is “very good.” Nor, according to the scriptural tradition, is this vision of hope limited to humanity. It is finally cosmic. So the first covenant named as such in Scripture is neither with Israel nor with humankind but with “every living creature of all flesh” (Gen 9:8–17), and so finally it is said, again by Paul or someone writing

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in his name, that it is God’s will “to sum up all things in Christ” (Eph 1:10; cf. Col 1:19). Indeed, what I would regard as quite the clearest statement of this cosmic picture of final redemption and transformation is part of a letter that is certainly Paul’s own. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation [ktisis] waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God; for the creation was subjected to futility (not of its own will but because of the one who subjected it) in hope—because the creation itself will be set free from the bondage of corruption and obtain the liberty of the glory of the children of God. (Rom 8:18–21) Who or what is this “creation” (ktisis) that “waits” with such “eager longing”? Despite a degree of discussion and allegation of uncertainty that has surrounded the expression, I agree with C. E. B. Cranfield that the only really likely understanding of ktisis at Romans 8:19–21 is that which takes it to refer to all subhuman nature both animate and inanimate. “With poetic boldness and with a penetrating prophetic insight Paul sees the whole splendid theatre of the universe together with all subhuman life within it as eagerly awaiting a time when the sons of God will be manifest in their true glory.”51 Just as the creation, through the disgrace of humanity, has had to participate in the “bondage” that “corruption” imposes, so the whole creation will participate in that particular “liberty” which is proper to it when humanity has its proper “glory”—the “glory,” that is, from which humanity “fell short” when it “worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator” (Rom 3:23, 1:25). In other words, yes, a biblically based theology suggests there will be a place in the age to come for our beloved dogs and cats and no doubt many other interesting and delightful creatures (cf. Ps 36:6). As I have just observed, God’s primary and “everlasting covenant” (berit olam; Gen 9:16) of faithfulness was made not with the Church, not with Israel, not even with humankind, but with “every living creature of all flesh” (Gen 9:15; cf. 15:9, 16–17; Jonah 4:1152). Further elements in Israel’s traditions consistently indicate the creation’s and the creatures’ response in praise and witness to their divine creator (Ps 19:1–7; 103:22;145:9–17; 148:7–10; Dan 3:57–81). In the New Testament, moreover, these affirmations are rendered even more precise by the Pauline and Johannine traditions and by the author to the Hebrews, all of whom in their different ways make clear that “all things” (ta panta) were created in and through Jesus Christ (di’ autou; cf. Heb 1:1–4; Col 1:16–17; John 1:3), that all things therefore have their relationship and their reconciliation to God in and through Him, and that all therefore proclaim the divine glory (John 12:32 [v.l.],53 Col 1:20; Eph 1:9–11;

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cf. 1 Cor 15:27, citing Ps 8:6; Rev 5:13–14). Hence in his portrayal of the Risen One, in the general sphere of redemption that surrounds the resurrected Christ, Titian was quite in the spirit of the New Testament to portray a village and trees and sheep—human society and artifacts and the natural order—and also a man walking with his dog (see fig. 9).54 As Julia Gatta says, “To see Jesus as the Son of the living God is not just to see him as my savior—although he is certainly that—but to see him as the Savior of all: the past, the present, the future; the human and the non-human creation. He is Lord of all, whether he is known by name or not.”55 The transformation of all things will then be the true end of our story—or perhaps, after a false start, its true beginning. In Christ’s rising from the dead, according to Paul, this reversal has already begun (1 Cor 15:23–28; Phil 3:8–11; cf. Col 1:13–15), and so the creation and the church are like women in childbirth whose labor has started: “We know that the whole creation groans together and travails together until now; and not only the creation but we ourselves, who have the firstfruit of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:22–23).56 How shall God do all this? How shall God redeem the whole creation, including those millions of human beings before and after the time of our Lord who have never even heard the name of Jesus Christ? How can these things be? Neither Paul nor any other canonical writer ever tells us. I suppose that was because they did not think they knew. Perhaps they were like Julian of Norwich, content simply to have been told, “What is impossible to you is not impossible to me. I shall preserve my word in everything, and I shall make everything well” (Revelations of Divine Love [Long Text], 32). And perhaps we do not need to know either. According to the fourth evangelist, when Peter asked about the future of just one other disciple—let alone all humanity or the whole creation—the reply he received was simply, “What is that to you? You, follow me!” (John 21:22). As the geometer intently seeks to square the circle, but he cannot reach, through thought on thought, the principle he needs, so I searched that strange sight: I wished to see the way in which our human effigy suited the circle and found place in it— and my own wings were far too weak for that. But then my mind was struck by a light that flashed and, with this light, received what it had asked. Here force failed my high fantasy: but my desire and will were moved already—like

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a wheel revolving uniformly—by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars. (Paradiso 33.133–45, trans. Alan Mandebaum)57 The life of faith and grace is to live in hope of this (let us be frank) for most of us, most of the time, unimaginable redemption, and to live as those who are actively preparing for it. Our every attempt to promote justice, compassion, forgiveness, and graceful order is a participation in that preparation, and hence, however modest and ordinary, however apparently useless or defeated, never in vain (cf. 1 Cor 15:58). Sooner or later, we all stand upon the precipice of death. And then, what waits for us? A positive and hopeful response to that question, and the promise that the entire created order58 shall have a share in its unfolding, appear to me to be the ultimate meaning and consequence of the resurrection of the Messiah, at least so far as those things were known or surmised by those whose writings make up the New Testament.

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figure 2. Fra Angelico, The Resurrection. San Marco Museum, Florence. By permission of Erich Lessing / Art Resource, N.Y.

figure 3. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Supper at Emmaus. The National Gallery, London. London. Permission of National Gallery Picture Library.

figure 4. Hieronymus Bosch, Ecce homo. Stadel Museum, Frankfurt. By permission of Foto Marburg / Art Resource, N.Y.

figure 5. Antonio Ciseri, Ecce homo. Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Florence. By permission of Scala / Art Resource, N.Y.

figure 6. Bernaert van Orley, Altarpiece of Calvary. Onze-LieveVrouwekerk, Bruges. Permission of National Gallery Picture Library.

figure 7. Michelangelo: Pietà. St. Peter’s, Rome. By permission of Scala, Art Resource, N.Y.

figure 8. The Mercy Seat: a reconstruction. Reprinted with the permission of the artist, Richard Posan.

figure 9. Titian (1485–1576). Noli me tangere. The National Gallery, London. Permission of National Gallery Picture Library.

Additional Note A On Varieties of Faith in Early Christianity

That there was a variety of faith and practice within the early Christian movement is evident from within the New Testament itself, as well as from the writings of the church fathers. Each New Testament book has its own approach to the faith to which it witnesses, presumably representing the particular approach of the author or community that produced it, and the books themselves witness to still others with whose views the New Testament authors are sometimes in evident disagreement. Naturally, all these Christianities, including the “lost Christianities” (as Bart D. Ehrman calls them) of those whom Paul and others attacked, are of interest to us.1 Nevertheless (and no doubt for the particular reason that I happen myself to be an orthodox Christian in the Western catholic tradition), it is those among the early followers of Jesus whose beliefs and actions led to what is sometimes called “protoorthodoxy,” and hence to catholic Christianity, who are of interest to me here and on whose views, therefore, I concentrate. As Robert W. Jenson points out: “The gospel’s community has of course no way to copyright her labels for herself or her message, if other communities wish to appropriate them; we must only be clear what ‘church’ and ‘gospel’ denote as here used. There may even have been or be religious movements that have resulted from the historical fact of Jesus but that are not communities of witness to his resurrection, and which someone might wish to call ‘church’ or whose teaching someone

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might wish to call ‘gospel.’ Here, too, we need only be clear that none such is the community whose thinking is here to be served.”2 Jenson, certainly, writes as a systematic theologian, not a historian, yet even from the viewpoint of the historian—of one concerned only with what might “really” have happened— I am not at all persuaded that to concentrate on the “protoorthodox” is to distort the story. Indeed, I think quite the opposite. Doubtless there were those in the early Christian movement who, for example, preached or venerated Jesus merely as a worker of wonders or the teacher of a saving wisdom that lived on, which is why in my main text I claim no more than that early Christians “frequently” explained their existence on the grounds of Christ’s resurrection. In view of the evidence, however, that claim can hardly be questioned. Nor, I believe, can we seriously doubt that those who made it constituted a broad and influential sector of the early movement. History, as we are often reminded, tends to be written by winners, and that is true. We need to bear in mind, however, that winners win for a reason, and that reason is not always, even in the short run—and, I suspect, never in the long run—because of mere falsification or betrayal. As regards those early disagreements reflected in the New Testament, it has to be said, moreover, that disagreement over the resurrection of Christ appears to feature remarkably little. Even the Corinthians, who appear to have questioned the idea of individual and personal resurrection, seem not to have questioned the resurrection of Christ. On the contrary, Paul appears to have been able to start from that as a datum.3

Additional Note B On Whether the New Testament Narratives Are Useful Sources of Information about Anything That May Actually Have Happened

In the preface to my book Render to Caesar I wrote as follows: Many of the questions to be addressed in the following chapters are historical and exegetical, and I try to approach them, at least in the first place, from within those disciplines. [Several chapters of this book] are largely concerned with what we usually call “the historical Jesus”—an expression that is hardly without problems of its own. To cut a long story short, by “the historical Jesus” I mean (like John P. Meier) the “Jesus” whom we can, at least in principle, recover and examine by using the ordinary tools of modern historical research.1 In considering such questions, I prefer therefore when I can to proceed on the basis of criteria normally preferred by historical critics: multiple attestation, and consistency. If, overall, I am less skeptical as to the value of the New Testament texts’ historical witness than are some of my colleagues in New Testament studies (and I am), that is not because I consider the texts to be sacred (although I do), but because I believe, on the grounds of the best scholarship I can manage, that my more skeptical colleagues are mistaken.2 As Cardinal König pointed out to the Second Vatican Council, it is not difficult to show that “the sacred books are sometimes deficient in accuracy as regards both historical and scientific

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additional notes matters.”3 There are, however, some in the New Testament guild who need rather to remount the horse from the other side, modestly recalling, as George Kennedy has said, that “ancient writers sometimes meant what they said and occasionally even knew what they were talking about.”4

That paragraph still represents my overall opinion, and I see no reason to change it. At the same time, it would be idle to deny that the problem as to what might be “historical” grows more acute, not less, as one leaves comparatively straightforward questions such as, “What did Jesus think about the Roman Empire?” and begins to ask questions such as, “What ‘really happened’ (however we understand ‘really’!) at the first Easter?”5 It may therefore be useful to hone my earlier remarks a little by saying something of how and in what sense I understand our texts—and in particular, of course, the Gospels—to be witnesses to whatever may have “really” happened to Jesus of Nazareth. It is generally accepted that, apart from the passion narratives, much of the material in the Gospels consists of originally separate units of oral tradition that have been given their present setting either by the evangelists or by those who created earlier written traditions on which the evangelists have drawn. It is also generally accepted that oral and written traditions (the latter, to begin with, relatively small compositions) persisted side by side in the church for decades, so that the oral was capable of influencing the written until quite late in the process.6 Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, provides us with an example of this process. He claims to have “handed on” to the Corinthians a formula that he had “received” – a formula which (if not previously written) certainly becomes written at this point (15:3–5).7 But then in virtually the same stroke of the pen he appeals also to living voices, indeed, to known witnesses, who by implication are prepared to vouch for what the written formulary claims (15:5–8). Later in the century, perhaps forty years later, the same phenomenon is still visible in the fourth evangelist who at two key moments—as Jesus hangs dead upon the cross and at the conversation between the risen Christ and Peter on the beach— suddenly and quite unexpectedly abandons the role of “omniscient author” and appeals to a known witness (known, at least, to the evangelist and his community) who will vouch for the truth of what he has just said (John 19:35; 21:24). “It is,” as one of my teachers at Oxford once said, “as if at that point he suddenly turns round and dares you to call him a liar!” There is, then, no doubt about the fact: oral tradition persisted. The question is, just what, in the event, did that mean? As Rudolf Bultmann observed in a splendid piece of understatement, “for the most part, the history of the tradition is obscure.”8 Indeed it is. So we must ask, in what way did oral tradition

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persist? And what did it do to that which it claimed to hand on? Could it freely evolve to meet the changing needs of communities? Or was it controlled and obliged to be, at least in some measure, static? In speaking of Jesus in particular, what was its relationship to whatever he had actually said and done—to “the Jesus of history”? Biblical commentators over the last century have responded to these questions with varying proposals. There are those, on the one hand, who propose that in the early church a largely anonymous tradition was freely created and handed on to meet the evolving needs of a church that had little or no interest in what might actually have happened to the historical Jesus. Hence what may look like stories about what Jesus said and did are, for the most part, really expressions of the later church’s faith read back into his life. On the other hand, there are those who propose that Jesus will from the beginning have expected his disciples to memorize his teaching rather precisely, and that in the early church the Twelve will have functioned as an authoritative body to formulate, control, and transmit accurately what Jesus had said and done. These opposing and somewhat extreme positions—the former generally associated with Rudolf Bultmann,9 the latter with Birger Gerhardsson,10 have been well described elsewhere,11 and there is no need to describe them again here. The view taken in this study is that such a community as the early Christian church probably did exercise some measure of control of its tradition, especially in matters that particularly concerned its identity and fundamental convictions. Here the analogy with the Middle Eastern village gatherings proposed, albeit somewhat anecdotally, by Kenneth Bailey may be useful, at least as a starting point.12 In such gatherings Bailey observed an “informal control” that allowed for some flexibility in transmission but by no means for unlimited flexibility. Thus, the more significant the material for the community’s identity, the tighter the control; and within that, different types of material receive different kinds of control—a poem or proverb must in general be handed on exactly, but a brief account of something said or done (what the evangelists’ contemporaries would have called a chreia13) or a somewhat longer story with several scenes may be told with some variations, provided the story’s overall direction, its conclusion and—if there is one—its “punch line,” are preserved correctly. “That is, the story-teller had a certain freedom to tell the story in his own way as long as the central thrust of the story was not changed.”14 Who might have exercised this control among the early Christians? “The community”—yes, but there are invariably particular individuals to whom any community looks, for whatever reasons. One of the curiosities of twentiethand (so far) twenty-first-century biblical criticism has been the persistence among some biblical commentators of the notion of anonymous tradition, an idea originally adopted by biblical critics from the nineteenth century folklorists,

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who supposed that “folktales” were the creation of “the folk.” There are two problems with this notion. The first is in that the field of folklore itself it has long been abandoned. Albert Bates Lord was blunt, even sarcastic, in his dismissal of it: “The anonymity of folk-epic is a fiction, because the singer has a name . . . the author of an oral epic, that is, the text of a performance, is the performer, the singer before us. Given normal eyesight on the part of the spectator, he is not multiple, but single . . . A performance is unique; it is a creation, not a reproduction, and it can therefore have only one author.”15 The second problem is even more far reaching. While conclusions reached in the study of folklore, which deals with the transmission of materials over long periods of time, were quite appropriately applied to studying aspects of the Scriptures of Israel, it is questionable how far they are appropriately applied at all to studying the New Testament. The letters of Paul and the Gospel according to Saint Mark were, according to conventional dating, all written well within the lifetime of many who would have witnessed the events around which they revolved. The Gospels according to Matthew, Luke, and John were written at a time when such witnesses were beginning to die—indeed, John 21 appears to reflect the crisis caused by just such an event.16 The commonsense observation of Vincent Taylor remains unanswered and unanswerable: “However disturbing to the smooth working of theories, the influence of eyewitnesses on the tradition cannot be ignored.” Such persons “did not go into permanent retreat; for at least a generation they moved among the young Palestinian communities, and through preaching and fellowship their recollections were at the disposal of those who sought information.”17 Certainly this is not to deny, first, that as Frank Kermode reminded us forcibly some years ago, “no narrative can be transparent on historical fact. . . the historian cannot write, nor can we read, without prejudice,” and second, that all histories are to some extent social constructs. Communities nurture collective memories of their past which shape the vision and narratives of their members. Eyewitnesses are not outside that process. They, too, are “social beings, who must bring previous understandings to their lived experience in order to interpret it. And when they try to proffer this experience in words, they will turn to known formulations, modes and genres to do so.”18 Nevertheless, that does not mean that there can be no relationship at all between a narrative and “what really happened [wie es eiglentlich]” (Ranke).19 If that were so, then there would be no point in anyone trying to tell anyone anything at all. Nor does it alter the fact that even with community constructs there is always also an “I” to be considered. “Groups and cultures might have what we call memory, which affects the member of those contexts, but groups and cultures do not remember and recall; individuals do.” “That one’s self is both

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variable and vulnerable may be disconcerting to consider, but it does not follow that selves are non-existent. We really have consciousness, we are really agents, till death, of past-into-future.”20 And neither the New Testament nor any other early Christian literature gives us any reason to suppose that early Christian tradition was or supposed itself to be an exception from that. Quite the contrary! Luke speaks of the materials in his narrative being “handed down to us by those who were from the beginning eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” (1:2) and later he says something of the qualifications of those who were commissioned to be such “witnesses” (Acts 1:8, 21–22). Matthew has warnings about those whom we might, in a wrong sense, be tempted to call “Rabbi” or “teacher” [didaskalos] or “master” [kathēgētēs] (23:8–10), but also of those whose task it will be to “teach” the things about Jesus (28:19–20). Paul speaks of those who are appointed in the church as “apostles . . . prophets . . . teachers” (1 Cor 12:28). Who were these people, and when and how did they function? We have in the New Testament a firsthand glimpse of at least one apostle at work. We have already referred to Paul’s claim that he hands on to the Corinthians traditions that he himself has received (1 Cor 11:23; 15:3). From whom did he receive them? Presumably from those who “were in Christ before him” (Rom 16:7), and they, according to his own testimony, included Peter and James (compare Gal 1:20 and 1 Cor 15:5, 7).21 When and how did he hand it on? Luke surely describes with some knowledge the sort of thing that happened: On the first day of the week, when we met to break bread, Paul was holding a discussion with them; since he intended to leave the next day, he continued speaking until midnight. There were many lamps in the room upstairs where we were meeting . . . and after [Paul] had broken bread and eaten, he continued to converse with them until dawn; then he left. (Acts 20:7–11) Clearly, then, there were assemblies. Paul himself gives us other glimpses of them—evidently not always working as well as Paul would have liked. For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s Supper. (1 Cor 11:18–20) And again, When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for

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additional notes building up. If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to someone else sitting nearby, let the first person be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged. And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder but of peace. (1 Cor 14:26–33)

These glimpses are as frustrating as they are fascinating. There is so much more that we should like Paul to tell us! Still, he has told us quite a lot. Evidently, Christian assemblies met with certain purposes in view, even if (in Paul’s opinion at any rate) they were not always very good at achieving them. They met to worship, they met to discuss and share their understanding and experience of the faith, they met to listen to the letters of Paul (Col 4:16) and (presumably) others (Heb 13:22; Rev 2:1–3:22), they met to celebrate the Lord’s supper, and thereby, in eating the bread and drinking from the cup, to “proclaim the Lord’s death until he come” (1 Cor 11:26). It is surely in those activities, some scribal, some cultic and liturgical, that we are to see the setting in which the community will both have formed its traditions and exercised control over them, determining what flexibility might be allowed and where it went too far. It is here too, surely, that “teachers” and “instructors” will have played their part. No doubt, as the form critics said, the “form” that these teachers and instructors gave to various elements in the tradition will have corresponded to the needs of the community.22 But there will also have been boundaries that must not be crossed, as Paul was very clearly aware (Gal 1:9–10), because all this was actually about the identity of the community—what it was, and what it was not. As for traditions about Jesus, Paul himself was evidently quite clear that, even though he had “the Spirit of the Lord,” still, what he said must be clearly distinguished from what Jesus had said. When he talks about marriage, we can see him making precisely that distinction (see 1 Cor 7:10–12; cf. 7:40). Can we identify others besides Paul who handed on the tradition, or parts of it? In many cases, I suspect, we can. An evident feature of Mark in particular is the number of occasions when he introduces an item of tradition—the raising of Jairus’ daughter, Simon of Cyrene carrying Jesus’ cross, the women watchers at the crucifixion, or Joseph of Arimathea going to Pilate to beg the body of Jesus—and links it to a named individual or individuals, as if those persons were known to his hearers. As I write this, I sense at once the eyebrows of colleagues being raised. John Dominic Crossan’s comment on Joseph of Arimathea

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says it all: “Need I say that Mark’s naming him renders him more and not less suspect as an historical figure?”23 I shall have more to say about this particular passage in my discussion of Mark’s passion narrative.24 For the present, suffice it to point out that Crossan’s rhetorical question, to which he clearly expects— even requires—the answer “No!”, reflects precisely that curious feature of twentieth-century biblical scholarship to which I have just drawn attention, namely, the dogma of the anonymous tradition according to which, since traditions are created by “the community,” their attribution to any individual who might actually have known about them clearly reflects “novelistic interest”25 and as a pious fiction must, therefore, be dismissed by serious historians. But, as we have observed, and as the folklorists have shown us, it is “anonymous tradition” that is the fiction. Real tradition always also involves individuals who begin it, and other individuals who hand it on. J. D. G. Dunn notes, “I see no difficulty, then, in merging the insights of oral tradition as community tradition and recognition of the importance of individual eyewitnesses in providing, contributing, and at least in some measure helping to control the interpretation given to that tradition . . . Original disciples of Jesus would of course have contributed crucial recollection and witness in local assemblies to which they belonged. Visits of apostles and highly respected disciples would have been major events in the lives of further-flung Palestinian congregations.”26 Sometimes, in refusing to take seriously an evangelist’s appeals to eyewitnesses, critics point out that in Mark, for example, Simon of Cyrene and the women at the cross appear to be additions to the tradition by the evangelist.27 I agree. They do appear to be additions and, from a literary viewpoint, rather clumsy additions at that! But the proper conclusion to be drawn from this is, I suggest, quite opposite to that drawn by some among the more skeptical. Writing in or around the year 70 of events that had happened thirty-five or so years earlier, Mark made these insertions for a reason. What was that reason? Serious commentary is surely bound to consider at least the possibility that he really thought these people were witnesses, and even that he might have been right. The Christians were, after all, still a relatively small group, and they surely knew who were or had been their leading figures and what they claimed to have seen and done.28 Now of course the claim that any particular piece of tradition is linked to a known witness, even if correct, does not necessarily mean that that piece of tradition is true or that it really tells us what happened. Witnesses throughout history have been known to make mistakes, to be deceived, to exaggerate, or even to lie. Nevertheless, if we are trying to decide about something that might have happened, a named witness is, or ought to be, significant. That is why we call witnesses in courts of law.29 And the fact is, the early Christian tradition,

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once it is freed from the shibboleth of the anonymous tradition and allowed to speak for itself, does from time to time make claims as to named witnesses both within the canon (for example, from the Markan passion narrative alone, Mark 15:21; 15:40–41; 15:43; 16:1) and beyond it (see, for example, Eusebius, HE 3.39.3–4, 4.3.2,30 5.20–4–7). Each of these claims needs, of course, to be treated individually on its merits, and some are more convincing than others. Thus, to give examples that for most readers of this book will not, I think, be especially controversial, we generally take at face value the eyewitness claim at 1 Corinthians 9:1 and 15:8; at 2 Peter 1:18, we suspect pseudonymity. Nevertheless, the operative phrase in each case is “treated individually on its merits.” What we must not do is dismiss such claims out of hand on the basis of the dogma of the anonymous tradition. The same, incidentally, is true of related claims, such as that made by Luke to be handing on reliable information (Luke 1:1–4).31 That Luke made such a claim does not alone show that he did so any more than it shows that he did not. The narrative he presents, and the individual elements in it, must, again, be treated on their merits, which will include factors both internal and external to the text. One other matter must be discussed before this note is concluded: it concerns the language of New Testament traditions. As the Homer scholar Milman Parry observed, where there is a tradition of speaking about certain kinds of traditional material in a certain way, that tradition of speaking will continue and be used even where the material itself is new. Parry gave an example of an oral (nonliterate) bard speaking of the Battle of Ravno, a battle in which the bard himself as a young man had taken part, and of which he was obviously very proud. He spoke of it, however, in language which echoed precisely the kind of language in which, as an oral bard, he was accustomed to celebrate heroic battles of antiquity. For him, in a sense, all those other heroic battles of old were present in the battle in which he had fought, and he was one with those ancient heroes.32 The early Christian communities also had a tradition of speaking about certain kinds of event—events that they regarded as sacred and revelatory of God’s purpose. They had the language of Scripture and the scriptural story. Therefore in their handing on of their own stories, although in comparison with the stories of Abraham and Moses these stories were very new, still, precisely because they saw them as a continuation and fulfillment of the old, precisely because, delivered from bondage by the blood of Christ, they saw themselves as one with those who had been delivered from bondage in Egypt by the blood of the first covenant, it was natural for them tell the story of Christ in the kind of language that they were already accustomed to use, the language in which they had always told those older stories that were a prelude to and present in the new. Hence, for example, their account of the sufferings of Christ, his

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being mocked and ill treated, naturally fell into the kind of language and imagery that was used to speak of the “righteous sufferer” in the Psalms or the suffering servant of God in Second Isaiah. Nor was this just a matter of making some kind of “proof ” or “argument” from Scripture. The purpose of ritual and liturgy is not to prove or argue, but to glorify God and thereby to discover, or rediscover, one’s identity in God. Hence we find in these narratives not so much the use of quotation from Scripture, although there are examples of that, but of allusion and echo. What we have here is not argument or apologia but recollection. The liturgy is “eis anamnesin” (for remembrance) and what is being recalled by performance and therefore (as in all performance) made present is not only the story of Christ but also the whole story of Israel that lies behind the story of Christ. We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. (T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding)33 In the sufferings of Christ the righteous sufferer of the Psalms is present and the Christian community is at one with the sufferings of the righteous and with God’s promised grace and mercy toward them throughout the centuries. “It is not a question of a hidden continuation of a sacred past which would deny the temporal, but of a continuity of Presence, which is creative and life-giving at every moment—one could say, of a contemporaneity of the Spirit.”34 Hence the Scriptures gave to the early church a vocabulary and symbols with which to comprehend the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; and at the same time, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus gave to the early church a new way of understanding the Scriptures. This is what the apostolic formula meant by its claim that the death and resurrection of Christ were “according to the Scriptures.”35 Many commentators have drawn attention to the prominence of scriptural allusion in the synoptic passion narratives,36 but in general they have treated it as a more or less scribal phenomenon. No doubt to some extent it is scribal. It involved meditating upon Scripture, and meditating upon Scripture is what scribes do. Yet as an instrument of anamnēsis it becomes something more: “the cult legend of Israel is reenacted in terms of Jesus.” As Ellen Bradshaw Aitken says, “to tell the story of Jesus’ death is to tell an old story anew, wherein the fate of the individual and the constitution of the community are inextricably woven together.”37 This was not—it can hardly be emphasized too much—a matter of the followers of Jesus “appropriating” the Jewish Scriptures, as if there had been some originally independent or neutral narrative of Jesus that

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had then been made to “fit” the Bible (or the Bible twisted to “fit” the story). There never was for these people a way of telling the story that was not “according to the Scriptures,” and if the tradition (now accepted by many commentators) is correct that the historical Jesus appeared among his people as a prophet of God’s kingdom, then the evangelist’s claim that the process started with him (e.g., Luke 24:25–27, 44–47), though perhaps a little tidier in its narration than was the historical reality, is nonetheless essentially correct. At this point, however, someone at the back of the classroom again puts up a hand and says, “Yes. But what actually happened? Was Jesus really treated as the passion narratives say? What does all this tell us about that?” I think that the answer is, “It does not tell us much!” But I do really mean that. I do not mean, “It does not tell us much, and therefore we may assume that Jesus was not treated as the passion narratives say or that the early Christians would not have known about it if he had been.”38 No, I actually mean that “not much” can be learned from the use of scriptural language and imagery about the historicity of the events to which the passage refers. What we can learn, and it is a very important “what,” is how this story functioned in the consciousness of the community, and how it was told in relation to the traditions that the Christians had inherited from Israel. In other words, the use of this kind of language tells us something about the significance that those who told the story attached to it. As to whether the story is a legend, or an account of something that really happened, that must be determined, if it can be determined at all, on the basis of quite other criteria. Let us consider an example: the soldiers’ mockery of Jesus in the passion narrative. Here is how Mark describes it. Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the praetorium); and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. (Mark 15:16–19) In considering this narrative, commentators point to its obvious resonances with Scripture: an ironic contrast with the psalmist’s portrait of the true King of Israel, “The Lord sends out from Zion your mighty scepter” (Ps 110:2); and, most obviously, to the fate of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah:“I did not hide my face from insult and spitting” (Isa 50:6).39 Possibly, in hearing the latter allusion we shall, if we know our Scriptures, also recall what is also said of God’s servant in the following verse: “The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that

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I shall not be put to shame” (Isa 50:7). All of that tells us how we are to hear this story. In Jesus’ being mocked we see the righteous of Israel being mocked throughout their history. All are present in this moment. Of course, we also see in it a fulfillment of Jesus’ own passion prediction, particularly the third (Mark 10:33–34), and a marvelous piece of situational irony, as St. Cyril of Jerusalem pointed out: Yet there is the figure, or type, of kingly state: for though they mock, yet they do bend the knee. And the soldiers crucify him, having first put upon him a purple robe, and set a crown on his head. What if it were of thorns? Every king is proclaimed by soldiers, and it was fitting for Jesus, too, in a figure, to have been crowned by soldiers. (Catechetical Lectures, 13.17) But what then of the raised hand at the back of the class and the question, “Did it happen?”? That is an entirely separate matter, and must be decided on the basis of separate criteria. Is it feasible for soldiers under Pilate’s command to have mocked and insulted a prisoner in their custody? (Mark does not seem to imply that the prefect had told them to act in this way.) If the soldiers had treated Jesus like this, were Jesus’ followers likely to have known about it? Those are the questions that we must answer. For what it is worth, I would say “Yes” to both. Even legionaries—and the soldiers under Pilate’s command were auxiliaries, probably recruited from Gentiles in Syria and Palestine40—were capable of behavior such as Mark describes, and worse, as is evident from the horrific accounts of the death of the Emperor Vitellius (Tacitus, Histories 3.84–85).41 And there seems to be no particular reason why news of the local troops having their “bit of fun” with the prisoner should afterward have been kept secret, or even why the authorities would have wanted it so. That the “whole cohort” (600 men) was involved sounds like an exaggeration, and perhaps only means “those who were on duty”—but this is really no more than the kind of hyperbole one might expect as the tale made its way round the wine bars. Of course the soldiers would not have had a “purple cloak” (porphuran) to put on Jesus—purple was vastly expensive—but no doubt a red soldiers’ cloak would have made the point, which is evidently how Matthew understood it (Matt 27:28). By contrast, the auxiliaries’ punch line, their mocking address, “Chaire, basileu tōn Ioudaōn!” (Hail, King of the Jews!) sounds to be exactly what they would have said—a parody of the soldiers’ salute to the Emperor, Ave, Caesar!42 Finally, most commentators acknowledge a tendency in the evangelists to shift responsibility for what happened to Jesus away from the Romans and onto the Jews, and this pericope, with soldiers

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under Roman command as its evident villains, goes against that tendency, which rather tells in favor of its historicity. Taken all in all, then, I think it entirely likely that Mark’s account of a Roman mockery of Jesus does speak of something that really happened. As we have received it, though, we are told it in a manner that also reveals the fruits of scribal meditation upon the event and upon the Scriptures. We see here then, in nuce, a process that we can perceive, if we look for it, in the entire passion and resurrection story. I agree with John Dominic Crossan that the evangelists’ narrations of that story are a fruit of reflection upon the Scriptures of Israel, a quest for texts that will make sense of the death of Jesus. What I question, however, is Crossan’s further suggestion that the bulk of the story itself arises out of those Scriptures. Certainly the scribes needed to make sense, in the light of Scripture, of what they believed had happened. But that was the whole point: they needed to make sense of what they believed had happened. I come back to my original point. Each episode must therefore be treated on its merits. Granted Crossan’s own distinction between two categories, “the prophetization of history” and “the historicization of prophecy,”43 I see every reason to put the episode of the soldiers’ mockery of Jesus into the former category. In other words, as I said, I think that something close to what Mark describes actually happened.

Additional Note C Are the Passion Narratives Examples of “the Prophetization of History” or of “the Historicization of Prophecy”?

John Dominic Crossan offers a hypothesis that the passion story as a whole was created mostly out of reflection on scriptural tradition by disciples who knew nothing at all about what had actually happened beyond the bare fact of Jesus’ death on a cross. “I take it for granted,” Crossan says, “that early Christianity knew nothing about the passion beyond the fact itself.”1 In other words, the narratives are not examples of “the prophetization of history” but rather of “the historicization of prophecy.”2 Crossan begins from the opinion of Jürgen Denker that the apocryphal Gospel of Peter is dependent upon scriptural interpretations for its description of Jesus’ sufferings and death, having such traditions in common with the canonical gospels, but not in dependence on them.3 Crossan, however, goes very much further than Denker. Crossan argues that the interpretative activity of Christian scribes led to the creation of a written passion narrative by the middle of the first century. By comparing the Gospel of Peter with other extracanonical traditions about Jesus’ passion and with the canonical gospels, he constructs a complete text, which he calls The Cross Gospel, and he attempts to show that this “is the one passion and resurrection narrative from which all four of the intracanonical versions derive.”4 Texts from the intracanonical tradition were later “combined with that original Cross Gospel in the Gospel of Peter.”5

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I regard this hypothesis, ingenious as it is, as implausible. There appear to me to be at least four reasons for questioning it. First, crucifixion was intended to be, and was, a deliberately public event of punishment and humiliation; it is therefore unlikely that those who were interested in Jesus could have avoided knowledge of the kinds of simple and terrible facts about his death that are recorded in Mark’s passion narrative, even if they had wanted to. Second, Crossan’s notion of one literary composition as the source for all later compositions on the same subject contradicts what is evident from all the materials that we have, namely, that the oral tradition continued alongside written tradition for decades and remained an important factor, influencing it even at quite late stages of the written records.6 Third, the stories in the Gospels of Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection are evidently independent of each other and cannot possibly derive from a single source, be it the Cross Gospel or any other.7 Fourth, Crossan’s theory about the evolution of the passion narrative misunderstands the role of scriptural allusion in such a process: the purpose of such allusion is not, in general, to recount what has happened (that is the role of the named eyewitness—a role which Crossan, of course, will not allow8) but to enable the community to understand what has happened. Still, all that said, the mere fact that such a view of the passion account as Crossan’s can even be imagined is evidence of the wealth of scriptural allusion and motifs that it does indeed contain. It would be unjust not to acknowledge the substantial contribution that Crossan has made to our understanding of the passion narratives by showing just how they have developed at various points through scriptural interpretation.9

Additional Note D The Resurrection of the Dead and Torah

The later rabbis were clear that “all Israel has a portion in the world to come.” They did, however, also suggest some exceptions to that, and among those exceptions were “anyone who says that there is no resurrection of the dead in Torah” (m. Sanh. 10.1; cf. ’Abot 4:22). Segal aptly paraphrases, “If you don’t believe in it, you won’t get it.”1 In other words, the rabbis—and, apparently, Jesus of Nazareth (see Mark 12:18–27 // Matt 22:23–33 // Luke 20:27–40)—were quite sure that they were right in claiming that Torah witnessed to the resurrection of the dead, even though they were also aware of others who denied that. Why were they so sure that they were right? First, let it be said that if the word “Torah” is understood (as it perfectly well may) as referring to all texts that the rabbis recognized as “making the hands unclean” (that is, as a part of Israel’s Scriptures), then there are certainly passages in what the rabbis recognize as Torah that teach the resurrection of the dead (so Dan 12:2–3 and, in the opinion of many exegetes, Isa 26:192). In that sense, the rabbis were formally correct: there is resurrection of the dead in Torah. But there are also, as we noted earlier, a number of texts in Scripture that appear to contradict that hope. On one occasion the Psalmist says that,

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additional notes The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any that go down into silence. (Ps 115:17)

At another point God is asked a series of questions: Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness? (Ps 88:10–12) Or again, Job asks, If mortals die, will they live again? (Job 14:14) The expected answer to all these questions is evidently “No.” In other words, the Scriptures give evidence of conflicting beliefs. There is nothing that need surprise us about that. The Scriptures at other points show us that there were on occasion conflicting voices in Israel. Sometimes, as in the dispute between Jeremiah and Hananiah son of Azzur (Jer 28:1–17), it is made clear to us which of the conflicting voices we are to regard as reflecting God’s will, and which not. And sometimes, as in the dispute as to whether or not God’s people should have any king other than God (Judg 8:22–23; 1 Sam 8:4–10:26), the conflicting voices are simply left to stand side by side.3 That in the particular matter that concerns us there should have been conflicting voices need not therefore surprise us, and especially we should not be surprised that some of those voices seem to have taken a pessimistic view of things. Ancient Israel was evidently not immune to influence from those around her, and in the understanding of those around her—I refer in particular to the Assyrians and the Babylonians—the fate of the dead does indeed appear to have been generally regarded as wretched.4 What then? In the matter of resurrection, the rabbis were clear that if one was to be true to Torah as a whole, then despite this apparent conflict of views, the more negative texts were to be understood in the light of the resurrection hope, not the other way round. So we are brought back to our question: why were the rabbis so sure about this? In considering that question, we must be careful to make a distinction. The rabbis’ lack of (or, at least, lack of interest in) certain historical-critical skills

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may lead us to criticize some of the grounds on which they defended their decision.5 But their lack of those skills neither explains nor undermines the decision itself. For the decision was not in itself a historical-critical decision. It was a theological decision about the God of Israel, and it was about the implications of Scripture as a whole. For the purposes of this note, then, I would point out three things that grounded that decision and, in my view, made it essentially correct. First, there are a number of texts in Torah that do actually point to the possibility of a blessed death (e.g., Gen 25:8; 47:28–31; 49:29–33; Job 42:17). As Jon D. Levenson says, “texts about the demise of Abraham, Moses, and Job, whose end is undeniably beatified by God’s providential intervention, give no hint that at that moment they fear Sheol, for their impending death does not negate God’s evident and abundant favor. They die with lives fulfilled and certainly seem to face no future terrors or fears whatever.”6 All that seems somewhat odd, if that death is also seen as a prelude to the endless gloom and meaninglessness that appears to be implied by Psalm 7:6 or 115:17. Secondly, a number of texts in the psalms and elsewhere say that while human power cannot escape the bonds of the Sheol, yet there is one who can break those bonds, and it is the God of Israel: I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice . . . I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; And my prayer came in to you, into your holy temple. (Jonah 2:2, 6–7) In this connection we should also recall those cases in Jewish Scripture where God, through a prophet, does in fact restore the dead to life, as in the stories of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath (2 Sam 17:10–24) and Elisha and the Shunammite woman (2 Kgs 4:8–37). Of course (and as I noted in my main text) these are not stories of resurrection in the full rabbinic sense, they are merely examples of resuscitation. But they are stories that do, nonetheless,

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show that the God of Israel has power over death—and that we are not, therefore, in the world of the Ugaritic epics.7 Third, we need to be aware that when, as with ancient Israel and the ancient world generally, personal identity is at least in some measure understood in corporate terms, it may be that certain distinctions that seem important to us did not seem so important for them or at least did not have the same kind of importance. Among those we should perhaps place the distinction between Israel as a whole being raised up, as in Ezekiel, versus individual Israelites being raised, as in Daniel. Levenson, as so often, makes the point with precision: Just as creation in the biblical vision is not a steady state of serenity but rather a precarious order maintained or renewed in the face of potent and malevolent chaos; and just as righteousness is often, perhaps usually, seen as vindication against powerful and successful evildoers and their false accusation (e.g., Jer. 15:15–21; Ps. 25:18–22, 35); so is the continued life of the family a triumph over the forces of death, a vindication against evil, and therefore a consequence of struggle. It is a turning back of the very real and deadly forces of adversity. In this, it resembles the resurrection of the dead much more than the immortality of the soul.8 In this context, it may then seem quite natural that, as commentators are beginning to discern, Ezekiel 37 itself was at an early point in its history already being interpreted in ways that linked it not only with national restoration but also with individual resurrection and restoration.9 What then? Suffice it to say—and this, surely, is what the rabbis essentially want us to learn—that we can easily overdo our stress on the newness involved in Israel’s evolving hope for the resurrection of the dead. Possibly, as many have claimed, the precise expression and articulation of that hope did receive stimulus from the experiences of the Maccabean martyrs10; nonetheless, it essentially continued and brought into focus something in which Israel had always believed—namely, that God is king, and God is just and faithful, which means just and faithful to Abraham’s seed (Gen 12:7; 17:7–8),and just and faithful to the creation, the creation in all its materialness and physicality, the creation that had from the beginning been declared “very good” (Gen 1:10, 12, 18, 22, 25, 31; compare Ps 36:7).11 That is the context in which we should see the rabbis’ teaching and the teaching of Jesus. W. Sibley Towner, commenting on Daniel 12:2–3, is therefore essentially correct: “resurrection is fundamental to the biblical presentation of God’s power as redeemer . . . It is a basic claim about the nature of God, who will never suffer the fruits of his creativity to see corruption.”12

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From this point of view, it is evident that the later Christian liturgical tradition that replaces the Gloria after Psalms 121 and 130 with the prayer, “Rest eternal grant to them, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them” (Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis)13 is entirely consistent with the hope expressed in those psalms. If God will indeed bless the faithful “in [their] coming and going both now and for evermore” (Ps 121:8), and if it is indeed true that “with the LORD there is steadfast love” (Ps 130:7), how can that not involve a hope that those who have put their trust in God will not be abandoned to Sheol but rather, having slept peacefully in the hands of God, will finally be raised into the glorious and unending light of God’s new creation? But if (as some, more or less in the platonic style, continue to imagine) life in some fashion or other were simply to continue after death then, as Robert W. Jenson points out, “those raised would not be identified by their lives lived toward death and made whole entities by it. And that is to say, their death would not in fact have been their death. The creedal ‘resurrection’ of precisely the dead persons, as the whole persons they were, is a determining necessity of the gospel’s eschatology. The life that will be appropriated into God is the life that ends in death.”14

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Additional Note E The Alexamenos Graffito and Texts of Terror

The inscription reads ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ ΣΕΒΕΤΕ ΘΕΟΝ (Alexander worships his God). It is generally agreed that the crucified ass is intended as a mocking portrait of Christ.1 It is important to note that the graffito is very poorly written, is misspelled, and was found in a slave training facility. The point being, this is evidence of early dislike, contempt, and general pressure upon Christians, not from “bad emperors” (as the church fathers tended to claim, e.g., Melito of Sardis, in Eusebius, HE 4.26) nor even from “provincial governors” (as some historians in the twentieth century claimed)2 but rather from ordinary people, that is, the social equals (or even inferiors) of Christians, who were no doubt suitable objects for and vulnerable to such prejudice precisely because they were a small group and visibly different from their neighbors. Hence, overall, the social observation of Luke is born out, that it was quite ordinary people who caused trouble for Christians, sometimes by putting pressure on the Roman civil authorities to do the same. In some cases this may have been because there were specific ways in which they perceived Christian profession to be a threat to their trade (so, e.g., Acts 16:16–23; 19:23–41; and possibly Phil 1:27–303). In other situations, such as that which is addressed by 1 Peter, and almost certainly that which produced the Alexamenos Graffito, it will have been nothing more or less than intense social prejudice, that is, “a negative social attitude toward members of an identifiable group based simply on their

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figure 10. Alexamenos graffito (graffito con crocifisso blasfemo). Palantine Museum. Reproduced with permission from il Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma.

group membership.”4 As a result of such prejudice, whereas, at least to begin with, the Roman authorities appear to have been, on the whole, not particularly interested in Christianity, or even mildly supportive of it (e.g., Acts 18:12–175), they were gradually pressured into more negative attitudes. This is plainly evidenced by the Pliny-Trajan correspondence and Hadrian’s rescript to Minucius Fundanus, wherein, reading between the lines, it is obvious that in both cases the governor and the hence the emperor are being provoked by local pressures into action against Christians because of friction between Christians and non-Christians (Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96; Eusebius, HE 4.9). What then? With regard to the early Christian experience, Paul Holloway’s observations are very much to the point: “the persecution of Christians is almost universally described in the commentary tradition as ‘local and sporadic.’ This is, of course, technically true. But it is also true that the lynching of Blacks in pre–Civil Rights America was ‘local and sporadic.’ Needless to say, such language does little to capture the constant physical and emotional stress of such an experience, which is better appreciated, I think, if we speak instead of intense

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social prejudice. Finally, and continuing with the above analogy, just as intense and widespread social prejudice influenced both public opinion and the courts in pre–Civil Rights America, so anti-Christian prejudice influenced the courts in the early Roman Empire. This is a key observation . . . Christians were hauled to court by their prejudiced neighbors where they faced judges who like their accusers were similarly prejudiced against them, and where there was little if any procedural justice to protect them.”6 In accord with the truism (which, like many other truisms, is a truism because it happens to be true) that those who are abused tend to become abusive, we note that the abusive New Testament texts to which we point in this study, in parts of Matthew and John and in entire sections of Revelation—texts which certainly have parallels elsewhere in the New Testament—may be seen as a direct response to the kind of pressure that Holloway describes since one way of coping with abuse is, of course, to be abusive in return (see Joel 3:5–8!). We have already said with regard to these texts that while we may appreciate the reasons why they came into being, they and the attitudes they embody need not and must not become a part of our own discourse. In the present context we must again emphasize that. The New Testament tells a story. We, for our part, choose how we pass that story on. We may tell it in a way that is mean spirited. Or we may tell it in a generous spirit. We may tell it so that it tends to narrow our hearers’ areas of concern. Or we may so tell it that it tends to widen them, so as to include all humankind and indeed the whole creation. It is the latter choice which is, I would argue, actually true to the New Testament, and indeed to the Biblical tradition, as a whole. If we do choose the former way—the narrow way—then I believe that, wittingly or not, we actually betray the fundamental and overall message of the New Testament which, like the Old Testament and the Q’ran, and despite its occasional lapses into what appears to be something else, is finally about the mercy and compassion of God for all that God has made, including our enemies and persecutors. None of the foregoing is to say that the biblical story, however told, does not have its hard edges. It is a story about God, and if God is as the story says, truly God, who is and will be finally all in all, then the story cannot be told so as to hide the fact we are all of us finally faced either with choosing God or choosing . . . nothing. There is no third possibility. It remains, however, that the choice is ours as to whether we tell that story as of a deity who seems rather to relish getting rid of or hurting everlastingly much that deity has created or else as of One who yearns over all things with an everlasting love, is afflicted in the creature’s every affliction, who cares when a sparrow falls to the earth, and who (in the Christian version) will follow us into the arms of death rather than be separated from us.7

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This is not to suggest that we should simply ignore or hide those parts of Scripture that seem (for however understandable reasons) to reflect the narrower version of the story, the more abusive, mean-spirited view of things. Such sweeping under the table on more than one occasion marks our contemporary lectionaries, and while it is doubtless well intentioned, it is a mistake. It is a mistake (if for no other reason) because it allows mean-spirited tellers of the story, those who wish us to narrow our concerns, to claim that they alone are being “faithful to Scripture” and that the generous tellers are “picking and choosing.” No, the task of the faithful exegete is rather to take hold of the cruel texts, the texts of terror, to face them in their context, to show how and why they are what they are, and also to show how the biblical narrative, taken overall and as a whole, invariably corrects their imbalance, as I believe it does.8

Additional Note F Further Reflections on Paul’s Understanding of Resurrection as Involving a Transformed Physicality

It will be clear from my analysis of 1 Corinthians 15 that I disagree with Hans Conzelmann’s assertion that Paul “does not emphasize the bodily character of the resurrection.”1 On the contrary, granted the qualifications to “bodily existence” as “transformed physicality” that we have already noted, the “bodily character of the resurrection” is precisely what Paul is concerned to assert. Still more strongly must I disagree with Marcus J. Borg’s contention that when talking about the resurrection of Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul must have intended us to understand it as a purely “spiritual” resurrection, since Paul clearly understood his own experience of the risen Lord to have been the same as the experience of the disciples, and his experience was clearly of “a vision”—that is, of something that did “not involve a physical body.”2 That Paul considered his experience on the Damascus road to be the same as the appearances to the disciples is true, as I have noted. But that the Damascus road experience was “spiritual” in the sense that it had nothing to do with, indeed was in contrast to, what is “physical”—that, as I believe I have shown, is exactly what Paul does not say. Indeed, it probably involves precisely the kind of thinking that Paul was arguing against! Moreover, for Borg to be correct, we have to assume that at 1 Corinthians 15:44, where Paul uses the word sōma four times in the course of a few lines, he uses it in two entirely different senses. One of those senses will have been quite contrary to its normal sense,

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which normally involved an element of physicality even when it was being used metaphorically, as of a “body” of people.3 How the Corinthians were supposed to know that Paul was doing this is not clear. “Perhaps,” Borg writes, “we need to take seriously that Paul thought there are spiritual bodies that are not physical.”4 Certainly, we would need to do that—if it had been demonstrated that that was what Paul thought! Moreover, pace Borg, the Book of Acts does not imply that there was nothing physical about the appearance on the Damascus road. Quite the contrary! Certainly those traveling with Paul “did not experience what he did.”5 Nonetheless, two of the call narratives clearly state that Paul’s uncomprehending companions experienced something. In other words, the narratives imply that there was some element of the objectively material, the physical, about what happened, even though, at the same time, they reflect an entirely understandable confusion as to what that element was (see Acts 9:7; 22:9). This element of physicality in Acts’ narrative of Paul’s conversion is entirely consistent with Acts’ general descriptions of the resurrection preaching. This preaching has, as Wright points out, “a robust and bodily character, emphasizing the Psalms which speak of God’s holy one ‘not seeing corruption’, and making a contrast between Jesus and David, who died and was buried and whose tomb can be checked.”6 At the same time, it stands in marked contrast to other divine revelations, including visions of the risen Christ, that are clearly understood to be entirely inward and personal (e.g., Acts 8:26; 9:10–16; 10:3, 10–16; 16:6–10; 22:17–21; 27:23–24). With Borg’s view of the texts generally, I would contrast that of Stephen T. Davis, who distinguishes “seeing” in the ordinary, straightforward sense from what he calls “visualizing” (“perception . . . assisted by God, an objective vision”). At the conclusion of his discussion, Davis notes that any sensible attempt to arrive at the plain sense of the scriptural accounts of the resurrection appearances of Jesus—whether that reading is done in the second century or the twentieth—would entail that the risen Jesus was seen rather than visualized. That is, the risen Jesus was a physical body that was objectively present to the witnesses in space and time, and he was accordingly seen in the normal sense of that word.7 Simply as an assessment of what the texts claim, quite apart from whether or not one actually believes that claim, Davis’ position appears to be correct. Further confirmation of Paul’s understanding of resurrection (including therefore the resurrection of Jesus) as involving “transformed physicality” is, I believe, offered by the most probable understanding of part of his argument

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in 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians, as is well known, bristles with problems, from the issue of its unity as a letter, defended by some but questioned by the majority,8 to the nature of the “opponents” against whom parts of it appear to be directed. Evidently these problems cannot be solved here. That said, we may note that no major study, so far as I know, questions the unity of the section that I wish to discuss—nor, indeed, of the entire section running from 2:14 through at least to 5:10. Moreover, much as we should like to know the situation that Paul is here addressing and the intended relation of it, if any, to the rest of 2 Corinthians, still it does seem clear that the section is essentially about Paul’s beliefs and hopes for his ministry and for apostolic ministry in general.9 To that extent, then, it may be possible to grasp something of what is being said even without being able to answer those other questions, interesting though they are, and enlightening no doubt as reliable answers to them would be. In the course, then, of speaking of his apostolic boldness and confidence, wherein “we do not proclaim ourselves, we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake” (4:5),10 Paul grounds that proclamation in this: “it is the God who said, ‘Out of darkness let light shine,’ who has shone in our hearts so as to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).11 As numerous commentators have pointed out, Paul surely here refers indirectly to the experience of his own conversion—to the moment when the risen Jesus appeared “to me also” (1 Cor 15:8); yet, as those same commentators also observe, his language seems deliberately chosen so that his hearers may find in it an echo of their own conversion and of what began to bring about change in their own lives.12 Is Paul then describing an inward experience, something subjective? Or is he speaking of something external, objective, a new factor impinging upon their senses and lives? Evidently Paul understands it to be both. It is subjective, an enlightening “knowledge” of God’s glory that has shone “in our hearts.” Yet that enlightenment has an external source, and that source is that it is seen (as it was seen by Paul on the Damascus road) “in the face of Jesus Christ.”13 After reflecting in what follows on the afflictions of an apostle and their significance, Paul returns to the apostolic hope, this time focusing on the apostle’s own hope of resurrection. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling—if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked. (2 Cor 5:1–3)

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Why do the apostles groan? Is it because, like Platonists, and perhaps (as we have seen) like some of Paul’s correspondents at Corinth, they regard their bodies as tombs and long to be free of them? Not at all! Rather, they “groan” for a reason quite contrary to that. “For indeed while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be further clothed, in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor 5:4). No mere “immortality of the soul” for Paul, who in this respect at least is still Saul the Pharisee. He looks for resurrection—not to be “unclothed,” but to be “further clothed.”14 For, as he puts it to the Philippians (using a rhetoric of empire that he could be sure would be very well understood in a Roman colonia): “our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself ” (Phil 3:20–21).15 Beker comments, “Christ possesses a transfigured corporeality . . . into which Christians are changed.”16 Exactly.

Additional Note G Further Reflections on Paul’s Understanding of Our Present Experience of Transformation In and Through Christ

There is an extraordinary and powerful passage in 2 Corinthians where, it appears, Paul reflects not only on Christian hope, but also on his present experience of the Risen One, and the transformation that he already begins to experience in his fellowship. It is 2 Corinthians 3:7–5:10. As I have already noted,1 2 Corinthians as a whole bristles with problems. Nevertheless, the unity of 3:7–5:10 (and, indeed, of 2:14–5:10) seems reasonably clear, and is fairly generally accepted among commentators. That is sufficient basis for my present purposes. At the point where I wish to begin my examination, Paul has offered thanksgiving for the apostolic calling in general and has raised the question as to who is adequate for such a calling (2:14–16). As regards himself, his answer to that question is to point out that he acts “from God”—and the Corinthian church itself is the evidence of that. God, then, is the source of whatever “adequacy” Paul possesses (2:17–3:4). “Not that we are adequate of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our adequacy is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life” (3:5–6). Paul goes on from that to speak of the privileges and burdens of the apostolate and his own role as minister of this “new covenant.” In a complex and difficult midrash he speaks of Moses who, in the service of the old covenant, experienced transfiguration and

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transformation (Exod 34:29–35; cf. 2 Cor 3:7–15). Herein, Paul sees a point of comparison with his own service—but also, and much more sharply, a point of contrast. According to Exodus, in the presence of the Israelites, Moses “put a veil on his face” but “whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak to him, he took off the veil” (LXX Exod 34:34). In Paul’s case, however, “we use great boldness of speech (parrēsia2), and are not as Moses, who put a veil on his face so that the children of Israel should not gaze on the end of what was fading” (2 Cor 3:12–13). Paul sees this, moreover, as the particular illustration of a general principle that applies not only to Moses or himself, nor even only to apostles, but to all faithful believers. So he restates Exodus 34:34 in much more general terms. “For whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is removed” (3:16).3 There is, however, another thing to be said, a further qualification to be offered. “Now the Lord is the Spirit” (3:17a). The transfiguration and transformation of which Paul is speaking and is about to speak is not a human achievement but a work of divine pneuma, God’s breath and power, which, like grace and peace, are not in any case to be separated from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.4 “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Jesus from the dead will also make alive your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you” (Rom 8:11).5 Paul’s restatements and qualifications complete, he can now move toward his main point. “And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty [eleutheria]” (3:17). “Liberty” is for Paul one of the marks of the gospel (Gal 5:1, 13a; cf. 2:4; 1 Cor 10:29). For the present, indeed, “liberty” has its perils (Gal 5:13b), but it remains part of God’s full and final promise, a promise that is, indeed, not only for humanity but for the entire creation (Rom 8:216). What, then, is “liberty”? The present context (Paul has just spoken of the abolition of the “veil”) certainly suggests that it means freedom from what Paul sees as negative features of the old covenant, “the written code” that “kills” (3:6; cf. possibly Col 2:14; Eph 2:14–18); but more importantly, “liberty” surely speaks of those positive elements that were for Paul an essential part of the experience of being “in Christ,” such as reconciliation, justification, sanctification, and (as Paul is about to say) transformation (cf. Rom 8:19). “And all of us”—again, this is not just about Moses, nor just about apostles such as Paul, but about the entire Christian community—“all of us”7 who have turned to the Lord, “with face unveiled (anakekalummenō[i] prosopō[i] 8), reflecting as in a mirror (katoptrizomenoi9) the glory of the Lord, are being transformed (metamorphoumetha10) into the same image” (2 Cor 3:18a). God’s glory, like God’s “yes,” is never merely a show. It is what it appears to be. Insofar, therefore, as we reflect that glory for others, we become that glory,

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we are what we show, so being ourselves transformed “from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3.18b). And—again Paul emphasizes the point—this, like the church itself, is never our own achievement but the gift of God: “for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18c). The contrast is, then, as George B. Caird said, “between Moses on the one hand and Paul and his fellow Christians on the other, the one hiding with a veil the transitory nature of the radiance on his face, the others with unveiled face displaying a radiance which is becoming permanent under the creative influence of the Spirit.”11 If we are to understand what Paul has just said to the Corinthians, it is, I think, above all necessary not to spiritualize or (in the common sense of that word) to allegorize him. Paul is not telling his hearers a parable. He is trying to tell them about something that is happening now, to him and to them—something indeed, that in his view will happen to anyone who seriously relies on the faithfulness of God in Jesus Christ. Alan Segal sees this Pauline language of transformation as intimately connected with (and therefore also as evidence for) a first-century form of Jewish mysticism.12 Certainly, many of Paul’s expressions seem to anticipate language and ideas that will be characteristic of the later Jewish mystics: the vision of an angelic mediator who is the image of God, bears God’s Name (like the angel of the Lord who will go before Israel; see Exod 23:21), or in other ways manifests God’s glory—that vision then leading the adept to union with and transformation into the same image, and to ascent to the divine presence.13 That is what happened to Moses. All that may be true. Yet at the same time it is essential, as I have said, not to lose the rootedness of all this in what is happening now. It is the mark of increasing sanctity to reflect to others the glory of God now. This is the quality that Dietrich Bonhoeffer seems to have reflected to his fellow prisoners in the Nazi death camp in the days and even hours before his execution.14 Men or women of God, according to their means, always promote the just republic. They are, in Barack Obama’s unpretentious word, “useful” to those around them.15 This is the quality (not without humor and self-deprecation, to be sure) that Shakespeare reflects for us at certain points in his comedies, which are deeply Christian. So, in As You Like It, Duke Senior, expelled from his rightful place and dukedom, yet amid the hardships of the forest reflects for his “co-mates and brothers in exile” a continuing sense of the glory, of “good in everything.” His response to discourtesy and aggression addressed toward himself is simply goodwill—“sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.” He promotes the just republic. He is useful. And his grace reflects grace and promotes the same grace in others who will say, whatever the apparent hardness of their lot,

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additional notes I would not change it. Happy is your grace That can translate the stubbornness of fortune Into so quiet and so sweet a style.16

and again, Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you, I thought that all things had been savage here, And therefore put I on the countenance Of stern commandment. But what’ere you are . . . Let gentleness my strong enforcement be, In the which hope, I blush, and hide my sword. This, Paul emphasizes yet again, this work of God in all who believe, is the basis of the apostolic confidence, frankness, and openness (parrēsia) of which he has already spoken (2 Cor 3:12). “Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart” (2 Cor 4:1). Surely it is especially poignant that, to the Corinthians, who have accused him of arrogance (cf. 2 Cor 3:1), Paul speaks of his apostolate simply as a gift of God, indeed, as “mercy” (cf. 1 Cor 15:9–10). “We have renounced the shameful things that one hides17; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth”—in short, by all that is involved in parrēsia—“we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God” (2 Cor 4:2). There is, alas, a darker side to this. The proclamation of God’s gospel divides, as it has always done (Luke 12:51–53). As Paul has already said, there are some whose eyes are still veiled. Does that mean then that the gospel has failed or God’s apostles have failed? By no means! Indeed, quite the contrary! “Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing [en tois apollumenois]” (2 Cor 4:3). “It is not the fault of the gospel or of the preacher that it is rejected by some” (Plummer).18 The present tense of the participle (apollumenois) makes clear that this is a continuing process, not one that Paul regards as complete. Those who “are perishing” may of course repent and turn, as the Ninevites did at the preaching of Jonah (Matt 12:31 par.; Luke 12:32). Paul is always hopeful of that (cf. Rom 11:32). Nevertheless, change will be needed: “those who are perishing” will need to turn, as Paul puts it elsewhere “from idols to serve a living and true God” (1 Thess 1:9). As C. S. Lewis used to point out, all roads do not lead to the same place, and at some points one must make a decision. I can have either the penny or the bun. I cannot for ever have both. Alas, “in their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” (2 Cor 4:4a). Here is an expression—“the god of this world”—

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unparalleled in the unquestioned Pauline letters, although there are expressions elsewhere in the New Testament that seem to reflect the same kind of conviction (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; Eph 2:2)—that is, the recognition of a power or powers other than God and external to humankind, “exerting influence over human affairs, and in some sense independent of God.” (Plummer).19 Of course there is no ultimate dualism in Paul’s thinking (cf. 1 Cor 15:24–27),20 any more than there is elsewhere in the New Testament, and Paul’s purpose here is only to point out two things to his audience. First, that the true gospel has opposition on many levels, even on the level of what will be called in the Letter to the Ephesians “world rulers of this present darkness, with evil spirits in the heavens” (Eph 6:12). And, second, that all such opposition is to the same end, “so that” we “may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,” that is, the gospel that proclaims the glory of Israel’s true Messiah, “who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4b). Christ’s glory is the visible image of the eternal Father, into which image, as Paul has just said, we, by reflecting it, are being transformed (2 Cor 3:18). Hence, then, the boldness and confidence—the parrēsia—of the apostolic proclamation, which is not about the apostles’ greatness, successes, or even their failures—“for we do not proclaim ourselves, we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor 4:5). Here, clearly, the force of the verb is weakened as regards the second element. Paul “proclaimed” Christ. He did not, in the same sense, “proclaim” himself.21 Nevertheless, the main point remains: the apostolic gospel is inseparable from apostolic service. Indeed, as C. K. Barrett comments, “it would be hard to describe the Christian ministry more comprehensively in so few words.”22 The second element—the proclamation of apostolic “slavery”—follows naturally from the first, because the “Jesus Christ” who is “Lord” is still the Jesus who lived and taught in Galilee and healed the sick and proclaimed the kingdom; and as he then sent out his followers to do the work of the kingdom, so it is still, “because it is the God who said, ‘Out of darkness let light shine,’”23—in contrast to the so-called “god” of this world, who only knows how to make people blind—“who has shone in our hearts so as to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).24 So this transformation that is happening to Paul and others like him, and the simultaneous collaboration in the work of God’s redeeming kingdom to which that transformation calls them, are for Paul signs of God’s work in the world—a “new creation” (as Paul will call it at 2 Cor 5:17) that is in its own way as powerful and wonderful as the first. As we have already noted, Paul surely here refers indirectly to the experience of his own conversion—to the moment when the risen Jesus appeared “to me also” (1 Cor 15:8). Yet, as we have also noted,

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Paul’s language seems deliberately chosen so that his hearers may find in it an echo of their own conversion and of what began to bring about change in their own lives.25 Since Paul and his fellow believers have begun to be transformed, since they have already to some degree come to experience the “risen life,” can they then expect to be free now from normal earthly troubles or their own weaknesses? Paul is far too realistic to suggest that. Old weaknesses will continue to assail them, and when they do not, the pains and distractions of the world will. There will be deserts to cross and dark nights that must be experienced until they become for us “luminous and fertile by God’s grace.”26 So Paul continues, speaking directly of the apostolic ministry, but indirectly of all Christian life that seeks to be faithful, “but we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” However strange it may seem that such a glorious treasure as this should be so poorly packaged, that, in fact, is precisely the point: it is to ensure that we do not confuse the packaging with the treasure or mistakenly imagine that the wit and wisdom of the messenger has somehow come up with the marvel that is the message! For that very reason, “we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; desperate, but not utterly desperate; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor 4:7–9). “Afflicted . . . desperate . . . persecuted . . . struck down”—these are the external pressures upon the apostle, which anyone may see, as they might have seen the cross upon which Jesus died. But as Jesus not only died but also rose in power, so the apostle is conscious even in the midst of his afflictions of the same power, the power that raised Jesus from the dead, so that despite everything he is “not crushed . . . not utterly desperate . . . not forsaken . . . not destroyed.” Why? Because the risen Jesus into whose likeness he and his fellow apostles are being transformed is not only the Jesus who died but also the Jesus who lives in power. So we are “always bearing about in the body the death and dying (nekrōsis27) of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our body. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor 4:10–11). The apostle’s meaning here is made clearer by his comments elsewhere. Writing to the Philippians Paul speaks of his aspiration to “gain Christ and be found in him.” Again, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings.” But how does that come about? “By becoming like him in his death,” says Paul. Like him! In other words, all this—Paul’s “bearing about in the body the death and dying of Jesus,” and his therefore also manifesting “the life of Jesus in his mortal flesh”—all this can

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only be understood in terms of participation, of a transforming union with Jesus that is already at work in the apostle. Although difficult to describe or categorize precisely, that transforming union is spoken of by Paul again and again in his letters.28 And a result of that union is that Christ manifests himself even in an apostle’s weaknesses, his mistakes, and his suffering. So Paul will point out movingly at a later point in this letter: “a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Cor 12:7–9). But again, just as Jesus himself did not seek death for its own sake or to display some profound spiritual mastery but rather came “to minister, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” so those who lay down their lives “for his sake and for the gospel” (Mark 10:45) are not doing it out of some masochistic desire for self-immolation, or for their own spiritual growth, but for the sake of others and for the sake of the gospel (Mark 8:35). “For this reason (hōste29) death is at work in us, but life in you” (2 Cor 4:12). Already, even amid the imperfections of present obedience and the frustrations of present existence, signs of that grace are to be seen. “Paul sees his efforts in an apostolic perspective; he knows that they bear fruit.”30 “Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58). “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:12–13). Having thus spoken of the common life of the church, Paul does indeed at this point turn back to his own experience as an apostle—although surely with no other intention than that his hearers will understand it as a specific example, a particular outworking, of that principle of living to which (as he has just been saying) all believers, in their degree, are called:31 “Having the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with the scripture—‘I believed, and therefore I spoke’” (Paul cites exactly the LXX Ps 115:1 [MT 116:10]32)—“we also ‘believe,’ and therefore we ‘speak,’ because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us into his presence with you” (2 Cor 4:12–14). Paul’s faith and proclamation rest on his knowledge that God has raised Jesus, and that the apostle himself and the Corinthians will share in that resurrection. The closing “with you” is properly emphatic: the presence of Paul’s converts with him will be the final validation of their faith and his apostleship.33 “Yes, everything is for your sake, so that

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grace (charis), being made more by means of more people,34 may increase thanksgiving (eucharistian), to the glory of God” (2 Cor 4:15). Those who are baptized enter a sphere of charis, in which eu-charis-tia is the natural and joyful outcome. Paul’s grammar here is not entirely clear, but his general intention is: this is a word of praise, not analysis. “So we do not lose heart, but even if our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” Paul’s present sufferings and difficulties are not evidence that the apostolic commission is unreal or invalid. He has already said that, on the contrary, apostolic “weakness” is evidence that apostolic power is divine and not human (4:7). Now he speaks personally, of his own sense of what is happening to him: in his heart, at the core of his being, he experiences renewal and transformation, however much in other ways he may seem to be weak or in decline.35 “For this slight transitory affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:16–18). “Affliction” (and Paul, although he calls it “slight,” certainly knew what “affliction” could mean) prepares us for “glory.” When all participate together in that “eternal weight of glory,” then will be the final fulfillment of Calvary—and not just of Jesus’ Calvary, but of all the millions of other Calvaries that litter the world’s history. Then and there, by God’s grace, all will find meaning and glory, just as the wounds of Christ are seen to be glorified in his resurrection. And so, appropriately, Paul goes on to speak of his resurrection hope (5:1–4),36 for which hope he and his fellow Christians are already being prepared, and of which they have already received God’s Spirit as first installment and guarantee (5:5). A final observation: the attentive reader of this note and of additional note F will have noticed that as regards Paul’s understanding of our present transfiguration and our resurrection hope, I have drawn upon the same part of 2 Corinthians, and that therein the two themes are intertwined. That is no accident. In Paul’s thinking as, I believe, in reality, our present transformation and our resurrection hope are organically and indissolubly bound together. We have only to turn to a passage such as Paul’s comments on the indwelling of God’s Spirit within the Christian that form part of his demonstration of the gospel in Rom 5–8 to see how intimate is that union of present transformation with future hope, indwelling Spirit with promised glory, spiritual with physical, Jesus’ resurrection with our resurrection: If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you . . . For all who are led by the

paul’s understanding transformation in and through christ Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs of Christ—since we are suffering with him precisely in order that we may also be glorified with him.37 (Rom 8:11, 14–17; cf. Gal 3:23–4:7)

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Additional Note H The New Testament and the Negative Eschaton: The Possibility of Damnation

Many of those who sleep in the land of dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. —(Dan 12:2) From the very earliest expressions of resurrection hope known to us, it is evident that not all are expected to share in that hope, or at least, not all are expected to share in it in the same way. The Qumran sectaries seem to have expected a blessed future only for faithful Jews.1 Among the disciples of Johannan ben Zakkai, R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus seems to have taken the same view, maintaining that “no Gentiles have a share in the world to come.” By contrast his colleague R. Joshua ben Hananiah asserted that there were righteous Gentiles who would also share in that blessedness (t. Sanh. 13:2; cf. b. Sanh. 105a). In general, R. Joshua’s view prevailed.2 Our final question is, then, how does the New Testament, taking its witness overall, address this issue? By way of clearing the ground, we may at once rule out those popular eschatological misconceptions (represented, for example, by the currently all too popular Left Behind series3) that understand the New Testament witnesses (and, therefore, the faith that finds them inspired) to be calling for an ultimate and transcendental violence. I refer to popular misconceptions of a God who “loves” all with an everlasting love and yet, to satisfy the divine purpose, or the divine

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honor, or whatever, will unendingly torture some. This notion is sometimes called a paradox, but if by “paradox” we mean (as we ought to mean) something that seems self-contradictory but is in fact true, then that, I believe, is to dignify the view I have just described far beyond its merits. What is involved here is not paradox, but error.4 To say this is not, of course, to reject the simple, formal possibility of damnation—the possibility, that is, that some human beings will finally and unchangeably choose to reject the joy and the glory for which they were created. Various New Testament witnesses clearly allow for this, assuming if not directly affirming the possibility of eternal loss (e.g., Matt 7:13; 10:33; 13:41–42; 25:41; Luke 12:9; John 5:28–29; Acts 24:15; Jude 13; Rev 20:14–15). Nevertheless good and evil, although opposite, are not therefore symmetrical, and the states associated with the final and definitive choice of either, that is, heaven and hell, are not symmetrical either. As Thomas said, Malum est privatio boni. Evil is not a thing in its own right. Evil is the absence of good. The New Testament is as clear about this as is the later church. “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Eternal death is the lack of that communion, indeed, the creature’s final and definitive refusal of it. Hence eternal damnation will always be a human choice, not God’s choice (John 3:19). The seer of Revelation envisages a “book of life” from which our name may be removed (Rev 13:5–8; 17:8). He does not envisage a “book of death.” In this latter regard, Ettore Malnati states the matter precisely: “By its nature Hell is then the fruit of love deliberately betrayed, and then of evil put in love’s place, in contrast to all that the Creator has offered for the true fulfillment of humankind as an entity formed in God’s image and likeness.” Frederick Buechner’s witty summary also makes the point: “People are free in this world to live for themselves alone if they want to and let the rest go hang, and they are free to live out the dismal consequences as long as they can stand it. The doctrine of Hell proclaims that they retain the same freedom in what ever world comes next. Thus the possibility of making damned fools of ourselves would appear to be limitless.”5 Whether any human being, faced with that choice, will finally embrace evil, we do not know. The New Testament witness permits us—even on occasion instructs us—to pray that it will not be so. The author to Timothy exhorts that “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone” because God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:2, 4). Elsewhere in this study we pointed to the universal and cosmic hope that penetrates the Pauline and the Johannine traditions and likewise the Letter to the Hebrews.6 Nonetheless the possibility of damnation remains (1 Cor 9:7). Dante Alighieri points to a process, undramatic and deadly, that might lead us to it:

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I cannot clearly say how I had entered the wood; I was so full of sleep just at the point where I abandoned the true path. (Inferno 1.10–12, trans. Allen Mandelbaum)7 On another level, C. S. Lewis’ imaginative masterpieces, The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce,8 provide images of the kind of self-centered folly that might drain us of our capacity for compassion and justice, and so persuade us to the eternal folly of which we speak (cf. Matt 25:42–46). On yet another level, certain characters in Shakespeare—for me, most notably Iago—suggest the possibility of a malignancy that is without meaning or limit, merely and fathomlessly malignant for its own sake.9 Along all of these lines we see that there might even, in a sense, be “pleasures” in hell—the pleasures of which we gain glimpses when, as only too often, we indulge our appetites for resentment of others’ good or for self-centered self-justification. The very thought of such “pleasures” will, however, send us in our healthier moments to our knees, begging to be delivered from them, just as the poet and activist James Weldon Johnson begged for deliverance: Lord, have mercy on proud and dying sinners– Sinners hanging over the mouth of hell, Who seem to love their distance well. (James Weldon Johnson, “Listen, Lord—A Prayer”10) And when such “pleasures” are compared to the glory and the joy for which God created us, then even the most horrific language of “shame and everlasting contempt,” “second death,” and “the lake of fire,” that the seers of Daniel and Revelation can offer in speaking of them is perhaps not strong enough (Dan 2:2; Rev 20:14, 15). Yet even as we consider all these possibilities, still, recognizing that the Cross was inconceivable to sinners before it was presented, so we must concede ourselves ignorant of the further steps that God may take in pursuing us—that same God who in Paul’s view having shut up all in disobedience (since all have sinned and come short of the glory of God) nonetheless wills to have mercy on all (Rom 3:23; 11:32).11 In that deeply Christian comedy, As You Like It, Shakespeare chooses to end with universal reconciliation: with the repentance of sinners (even the villainous usurping Duke, even the cruel elder brother), with a Dance, with Marriage (save for those who have chosen the Way of Renunciation of Images12) and with the reconciliation of all. Paul, at least,

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clearly hoped, prayed, and believed that God, who was “in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” (2 Cor 5:19) wills the same kind of conclusion in the life of the created order. The Pauline tradition as a whole continues to emphasize this universal promise (Eph 1:10; Col 1:20). And indeed, as I have already said, such a conclusion will perhaps not really be a conclusion at all but rather a true beginning after a false start. Proceed, proceed. We will begin these rites, As we do trust they’ll end, in true delights.13

Notes

prologue 1. According to Josephus, the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (107–76 B.C.) “had eight hundred of his captives crucified in the midst of the city [Jerusalem], and their wives and children butchered before their eyes” (War 1.97, trans. H. St. John Thackeray; see also Antiquities 13.380). Interestingly enough, Herod the Great seems not to have practiced crucifixion, though surely not from motives of clemency—see Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of The Cross, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977 [1976]), 84–85. 2. Cicero described it as “crudelissimum taeterrimum supplicium” (Against Verres 5.165). See further Hengel, Crucifixion, passim; John Granger Cook, “Envisioning Crucifixion: Light from Several Inscriptions and the Palatine Graffito,” Novum Testamentum 50 (2008): 262–85. 3. See, however, additional note A: “On Varieties in Early Christianity.” 4. A. M. Ramsey, The Resurrection of Christ: An Essay in Biblical Theology (London: Geoffrey Bles, Centenary, 1945), 7–8; cf. Jenson, ST, 1:4–5. Anthony J. Kelly, C.S.S.R., writes, “It came home to me after completing my recent Eschatology and Hope (Orbis, 2006) that all the various themes and questions treated in such a book depended, in the most elemental way, on the resurrection of Christ. Our present hope in the face of all the challenges of life, suffering, and death, is an effect of the resurrection. Unless that had happened, hope would at best be a repressive optimism, or an accommodation to routine despair. But the effect of the resurrection is to see the world and to live in it otherwise.” Kelly modestly adds, “That is hardly an original insight” (The Resurrection Effect: Translating Christian Life and Thought [Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2008, ix–x). Perhaps not, but it is well

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expressed, and Kelly’s ensuing discussion is a striking amplification of it (see The Resurrection Effect, passim). 5. By “cult” I mean the totality of their external religious practice and observance; by “liturgy” I mean the customary forms of communal worship that were an aspect of that cult, such as the daily sharing of Eucharist (“breaking bread”) referred to by Luke in Acts 2:46. 6. See further additional note B, “On Whether the New Testament Narratives Are Useful Sources of Information about Anything That May Actually Have Happened.”

chapter 1 1. Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Fragments, trans. Ralph S. Fraser (London: SCM, 1971), 251. In his own lifetime, Reimarus (1694–1768) left his analysis of the historical Jesus unpublished. Parts of it were revealed to the public after his death by his student Gotthold Ephraim Lessing under the title, Fragments by an Anonymous Writer (Wolfenbütteler Fragmente, also known as Fragmentenstreit), 1774–78. 2. Compare Johannes Pedersen, Israel (London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1926), 1:460–70; Samuel Sandmel, The Hebrew Scriptures: An Introduction to their Literature and Religious Ideas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 530–31; Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 4th ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 61–62; John P. Meier, Companions and Competitors, vol. 3 of A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 406–7; Alan F. Segal, Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 378–79. 3. James L. Crenshaw is appropriately cautious, but suggests that in regard to life beyond the grave, Sirach “could be labeled a proto-Sadducee,” noting a number of other parallels (The Book of Sirach, NIB [Nashville: Abingdon, 1997], 5:628); see also Alexander A. Di Lella, “Wisdom of Ben Sira,” ABD 6:934; N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 136; Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 194–96. In this connection, we should probably also note Ben Sira’s vigorous defense of the Jerusalem priesthood and cult, on which various critics have remarked: see Benjamin G. Wright III, “‘Fear the Lord and Honor the Priest’: Ben Sira as Defender of the Jerusalem Priesthood,” in The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research, ed. Pacratius C. Beentjes (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997), 189–222. 4. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 194–95. 5. Segal, Life after Death, 378. In an earlier essay, Segal is rather more complimentary as regards Sadducean views, noting only that they reflect “the traditional concerns of Israelite culture—its abhorrence of notions of an afterlife, probably because of its relationship to idolatry, and the virtual lack of the notion in the Hebrew Bible”; see “Life after Death” in The Resurrection: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Resurrection of Jesus, ed. Stephen T. Davis; Daniel Kendall, S.J.; and Gerald O’Collins, S.J. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 106.

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6. Allen Dwight Callahan, The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 60. Callahan’s point is that the prophet’s vision of hope resonated with African American slaves who found themselves in similar situations of enforced exile and bondage: In the biblical imagination of the slaves and their progeny, the text of the prophet’s vision of dry bones is emblematic of African-American hope that all the souls lost in the catastrophic exile of slavery might be restored and revived, that their bones might yet live again. The Negro spiritual “Dry Bones” recalls the vision of a dead, disjointed people in Ezekiel 37.1–14: “Them bones, them bones, them dry bones / Now hear the word of the Lord.” It is precisely in the broken, lifeless desiccation of exile that the word of the Lord comes as a mighty, rushing wind of restoration. The biblical vision of the valley of bleached bones became a venerable image in African-American preaching. Of course African Americans have not been the only community to hear in the story of Israel’s exile and return resonances with their own experiences of oppression: one has only to watch the reactions of a group of Italians hearing (or better still, joining in with) “Va pensiero” (the chorus of the Hebrew slaves in Verdi’s Nabucco) to see that (Nabucco 3.2). Indeed, in this particular case, our claim that the story of Israel’s exile resonates with the others’ experience of oppression becomes even more striking when one notes that, within the dramatic action of the opera itself, it is obvious that Verdi and his librettist Temistocle Solera did not actually intend the chorus to have this effect—quite the contrary, for the chorus’ attitude is at once challenged by the High Priest Zaccaria, whose prophetic “Oh chi piange . . . Del futuro nel buio” takes up melodic and rhythmic elements from “Va pensiero” but places them in a quite different dynamic and dramatic context. 7. Bruce D. Chilton, The Isaiah Targum (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1987), 62. For discussion of the ideas involved here, see further Chilton, The Glory of Israel (Sheffield, England: JSOT, 1983). 8. Jacob Neusner, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Exile and Return in the History of Judaism (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 41 (my emphasis). 9. For discussion, see, e.g., James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, ICC (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1926), 84–85, 470–72; Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, trans. J. A. Baker, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961–67 [1959–64]), 2:512–15; Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. G. M. Stalker, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd / New York: Harper and Row, 1962–65 [1957–60]), 1:407–8, 2:350; John E. Goldingay, Daniel, WBC 30 (Dallas: Word, 1989), 306–8; John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 110, 391–93, 394–98; Émile Puech, La Croyance des Esséniens en la vie future: immortalité, résurrection, vie éternelle? Histoire d’une croyance dans la Judaïsme ancient (Paris: Libraire Lecoffre, J. Gabalda, 1993), 79–85; Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, The Book of Daniel, NIB (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 7:148; Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy

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(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 172; Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 183–91; George W. E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 23. Stanley Porter is the only scholar whom I have so far discovered who disagrees with this rather impressive consensus. Porter claims that Dan 12:1–3 “contains no clear idea of physical or bodily resurrection” (“Resurrection, the Greeks, and the New Testament,” in Resurrection, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999], 58–59), but since, beyond his bare assertion that it is so, he offers no analysis of the text or other argument to support his view, it is difficult to know how one might take him seriously. 10. Often associated with this is a passage from the “Apocalypse of Isaiah” (Isa 24–27), which should probably be dated in the Second Temple period: “Your dead shall live, my corpse shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to the shades” (Isa 26:19). There is, however, no consensus as to its intentions with respect to the resurrection of the dead. Some have asserted, as did the rabbis, that it does affirm the resurrection of the dead (b. Sanh. 90b; among modern scholars, see Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology, 172, 484; Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 31–33); others have been cautious (e.g., S. H. Hooke, The Resurrection of Christ as History and Experience [London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1967], 17); and others have denied such a reference (e.g., G. W. Wade, Isaiah [London: Methuen, 1911], 169, 170–71; Chrysostome Larcher O.P., “La Doctrine de la résurrection dans l’AT,” Lumière et Vie 3 (1952): 19; Collins, Daniel, 395). Levenson is certainly right to say that the passage is “ambiguous” (Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 200), and I have found his discussion (197–200) particularly helpful. 11. In the opinion of many, this evolved notion of resurrection emerged at least in part as a direct result of the sufferings of Jewish martyrs for their faith; so, for example, James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, ICC (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1979 [first edition ca.1926]), 471–72; Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 23–140; John Day, “The Development of Belief in Life after Death in Ancient Israel,” in After the Exile: Essays in Honour of Rex Mason, ed. John Barton and David J. Reimer (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996), 248–57; David Catchpole, Resurrection People: Studies in the Resurrection Narratives of the Gospels (Macon, Ga.: Smyth and Helwys, 2002), 141. For my part while (as I have indicated above) I do not doubt that belief in resurrection was (and remains) a consolation and cause of hope to those who consider the sufferings of martyrs or any unjust or untimely death, I am still not convinced that that will suffice to account for the rise of the belief itself—nor, incidentally, does it explain why some of the evidence for belief in individual resurrection, such as 1 En. 22:3–4, appears to predate the Jewish martyrdoms (see also below, n. 14). The only adequate explanation for such a profound development must surely be seen as bound up with the nature of the God of Israel, who is essentially a God who gives life, and who is faithful; see further additional note D: “The Resurrection of the Dead and Torah” and the discussion in Kevin J. Madigan and Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 180–200. Among other attempted explanations for belief in the resurrection of the dead, we may note that S. H. Hooke connected the

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idea directly with the development of a new and deeper sense of individual sin and of God’s concern with that, as well as with national sin (Hooke, Resurrection of Christ, 15–17); while Sandmel suggested that a degree of Persian influence lay behind the development (Hebrew Scriptures, 530; cf. Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, trans. James W. Leitch [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975], 261). While there is no need to deny that either or both of these factors may have had some influence on the development of the idea, neither appears to me to be particularly plausible as an explanation of its origin. 12. See Larcher, Le Livre de la Sagesse, 1:141–61. 13. Wisdom has often been misunderstood as teaching only a platonic “immortality of the soul” (e.g., Ernest G. Clarke, The Wisdom of Solomon [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973], 12; Emil Schürer revised Geza Vermes et al., The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973–87], 3.1.572; Pheme Perkins, Resurrection: New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection [New York: Doubleday, 1984], 51; David A. deSilva, 4 Maccabees [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998], 137; Stanley Porter, “Resurrection,” 60–61; deSilva, 4 Maccabees: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek text in Codex Sinaiticus [Leiden: Brill, 2006], 267). Such a view is understandable. As Paul Beauchamp, S.J., concedes, “Tout en affirmant clairement leur victoire sur la mort, l’auteur de la Sagesse ne dit nulle part que les justes ressusciteront, ni même—explicitement—qu’ils recevront un corps neauveau dans le monde à venir. Le mot meme de ‘résurrection’ n’est pas employé par lui” (“Le salut corporel des justes et la conclusion du livre de la Sagesse,” Biblica 45 [1964]: 491.) Yet though the word “resurrection” is not used, careful reading of Wis 3 shows, I think, that the author has this hope in mind, however much he may avoid its name—perhaps, as Émile Puech has suggested, seeking not to shock unduly his Hellenistic readers. In Puech’s opinion, “L’auteur a dû connaître la doctrine de la résurrection et, s’il ne l’énonce pas, sans doute pour ne pas choquer ses lecteurs hellénistes, il ne la nie pas non plus” (Puech, La Croyance des Esséniens, 96). Puech’s whole discussion (92–98) is useful. See also Chrysostome Larcher, O.P., Études sur le Livre de la Sagesse (Paris: Gabalda, 1969), 321–27; Le Livre de la Sagesse 1:284–86; Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 162–75; Donald E. Gowan, “Wisdom,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, ed. D. A. Carson, Peter O’Brien, and Mark A Seifrid (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck / Grand Rapids, Michigan, Baker Academic, 2001), 227. 14. Translation by E. Isaac in OTP 1:24; the passage is from the “Book of Watchers,” an originally independent composition often attributed to the third century B.C. (e.g., M. A. Knibb, following J. T. Milik, in AOT, 174), in which case the passage would appear to provide evidence of belief in the resurrection of the dead dating from a time well before the persecutions under Antiochus Epiphanes (cf. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 196). 15. Text and translation in b/f μ/yw“ tB'iv'l rWDs: The Traditional Prayer Book for Sabbath and Festivals, ed. and trans. David de Sola Pool (New York: University Books, 1960), 7, 8. 16. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 189. Larcher in his 1969 study suggested that the author of Wisdom, in reflecting on the doctrine of “une résurrection corporelle” possibly “la concevait-il en function d’une matière plus pure

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et plus subtle que celle qui constitue l’étoffe des corps terrestres” (Études sur le Livre de la Sagesse, 327; see also Le Livre de la Sagesse, 1:284–86). 17. See Alan Segal, “Paul and the Beginning of Jewish Mysticism” in Death, Ecstasy and Other Worldly Journeys, ed. John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane (New York: State University of New York, 1995), 97; cf. Moshe Idel, Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005), 28–29. 18. See Donald E. Gowan, “Wisdom,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, 1:237–38; P. W. van der Horst, “Pseudo-Phocylides and the New Testament,” ZNW 69 (1978): 187–202. 19. See Philip R. Davies, “Didactic Stories,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, 1:118–19. 20. A. F. J. Klijn, “2 (Syriac Apocalypse of ) Baruch,” in OTP 1:619; Perkins, Resurrection, 47–51. 21. See further Albert L. A. Hogeterp, “Resurrection and Biblical Tradition,” Bib 89 (2008): 59–69. 22. See additional note D: “The Resurrection of Dead and Torah.” 23. Showings [long text], 32; see the entire section in Julian of Norwich: Showings, ed. and trans. Edmund Colledge, O.S.A., and James Walsh, S. J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 232–33. 24. Crossan in N. T. Wright and John Dominic Crossan, “The Resurrection: Historical Event or Theological Explanation: A Dialogue,” in The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue, ed. Robert B. Stewart (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 24–25. 25. Levenson, Resurrection, 20. 26. Levenson, Resurrection, 21. 27. Compare Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 140–46. On the “Platonic” distinction of soul and body see further, however, chapter 2, n. 25. 28. Daniel J. Harrington, S. J., Invitation to the Apocrypha (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 208; H. Anderson, “4 Maccabees,” in OTP 2:533–34; David A. deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 14–18; 4 Maccabees in Codex Sinaiticus, xiv–xvii. 29. See Davies, “Didactic Stories,” 1:127–28; deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 137; 4 Maccabees in Codex Sinaiticus, 267. 30. Davies, “Didactic Stories,” 128. 31. In Henry Austen Wolfson’s view, “it is quite evident that all the references to resurrection found in the traditional literature of [Philo’s] time were understood by him as being only a figurative way of referring to immortality” (Philo [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947], 1:404).

chapter 2 1. Cyril Bailey, Titi Lucreti Cari de rerum natura libri sex, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1947), 1:13. Cicero represents the Epicurean view in this respect as celebrating its deliverance from the kind of god “who foresaw everything, considered

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everything, noted everything, and looked upon himself as concerned in everything—a busy and prying god. From this has come, in the first place, your idea of preordained necessity, which you call εἱμαρμένη, meaning by the term that every event that occurs had its origin in eternal truth and the chain of causation—(though what is to be thought of a philosophy that holds the ignorant old crone’s belief that everything happens by destiny?)—and secondly your art of μαντικὴ, or divinatio, as it is called in Latin, which, if we were willing to listen to you, would imbue us with such superstition that we should have to pay regard to soothsayers, augurs, diviners, prophets, and interpreters of dreams. From these terrors we have been released by Epicurus, and claimed for freedom; we do not fear beings of whom we understand that they neither create trouble for themselves, nor seek it for others, and we worship, in piety and holiness, a sublime and exalted nature” (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.20, trans. Francis Brooks). 2. Bailey, De rerum natura, 1:13–14. 3. “Nihil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum” (text in Bailey, De rerum natura, 3:344–45). “Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living. So that the man speaks but idly who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because it is painful in anticipation. For that which gives no trouble when it comes is but an empty pain in anticipation. So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since, so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more” (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus §§124–35; cited in Bailey, De rerum natura, 2:1131–32). 4. Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedes aequo animoque capis securam, stulte, quietem? (text in Bailey, De rerum natura, 1:350) 5. The passage usually (and appropriately) cited in this latter connection is Virgil, Aeneid 6.847–53, and I have so cited it myself (see my Render to Caesar, 3–4, 121). Since writing that, however, I become increasingly aware that to imagine that this passage therefore reflects without remainder Virgil’s own view of Roman imperium or that it is the message of the poem as a whole (in other words, to see the Aeneid simply as a “soaring manifesto of Pax Romana and Augustan Revolution” [so John Dominic Crossan, “Paul and Rome: The Challenge of New World Order” in USQR 59, no. 3–4 (2005): 11]) is vastly to oversimplify. Indeed, it is to distort. We may begin by asking ourselves why it is that Aeneas, having received the imperial “mission charge” (so to speak) at Aeneid 6.847–53, is then sent back into the world not through the horn gate which “offers easy exit for true shades” [qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris] but through the gate of ivory, by which “the Spirits send false

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dreams to the world above” [falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes] (6.893–900, trans. Lombardo). Surely (and pace a number of attempts at other kinds of scholarly explanation) this is an exquisite piece of situational irony—a conclusion that becomes all the more obvious when we recall that Virgil learned this particular image from his master Homer, who also makes it quite clear (through the lips of wise Penelope) that there are two gates, one of horn and one of ivory, and of these, “those dreams that come through the gate of ivory deceive, bringing words that find no fulfillment (τῶν οἳ μέν κ’ἔλθωσι διά πριστοῦ ἐλέϕαντος, οἵ ῥ’ἐλεϕαίρονται, ἔπε’ ἀκρὰαντα ϕέροντες)” (Odyssey 19.564–65). This irony is reflected, indeed, in the poem’s narrative structure overall, wherein, in the first half, Aeneas is essentially the victim of imperial aggression, whereas in the second, from the viewpoint of Turnus (a viewpoint that Virgil is evidently quite willing to give us), he becomes essentially the representative of imperial aggression. The abused becomes the abuser: thus one might argue for a parallel here with Athens threatened by and resistant to Persian imperial aggression early in the fifth century B.C., only to reenact the debate from the opposite viewpoint, that of τύραννος πόλις, by threatening the Melians with Athens’ own version of imperial aggression some decades later (see Gregory Crane, Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity: The Limits of Political Realism [Berkeley: University of California, 1998], 241–57). Again, at the very beginning of his epic, Virgil asks, “Muse, tell me why the Queen of Heaven / Was so aggrieved, her godhead so offended, / That she forced a man of faultless devotion / To endure so much hardship. Can there be / Anger so great in the hearts of gods on high? [Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso / quidve dolens regina deum tot volvere casus / insignum pietate virum tot adire labores / impulerit. tantaene animis caelestibus irae?] (1.8–11, trans. Lombardo)—a question which is never answered throughout the entire poem. To view the Aeneid as merely “an epic saga whose first word is ‘weapons’ (arma) . . . a glorious hymn to Augustan redemption . . . a splendid dialectic of poetry and propaganda” (Crossan, “Paul and Rome,” 10) is to ignore precisely the shadow which that unanswered question casts over the entire story. This is not to say that Virgil is anti-empire any more than he is pro-empire. Rather, Virgil and other poets of the period should be seen, as Karl Galinsky puts it, “neither as ideological supporters nor cryptocritics, but as purveyors of ambivalences, ambiguities, and ironies on a rather massive scale” (Augustan Culture [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996], 245; see also W. R. Johnson, “Introduction” in Stanley Lombardo, Virgil: Aeneid [Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 2005], xxxii–lxxi; see further Richard F. Thomas, Virgil and the Augustan Reception [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001], esp. 222–96; Christopher McDonough, “Friends, Romans, Countrymen: A Classicist’s Reading of Render to Caesar,” STR 50, no. 2 [2007]: 319–29). For discussion of earlier questioning of imperium and imperial aggression in non-Jewish antiquity, see Ann Ward, Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire [Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2008], 1–21, 159–71, and passim). As Franco Serpa points out, “Un poeta antico è fuori del nostro mondo mentale e psicologico, anche se egli a la sua poesia hanno contribuito, e in maniera determinante, a formarlo. Studiando quel poeta soltanto con le nostre esperienze di oggi, corriamo il rischio di parlare troppo di

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noi, indirettamente, delle nostre angosce e dei nostri artifici razionali, e poco di lui. È un rischio che alcuni dei critici moderni, anche intelligenti e originali, non hanno evitato.” [A poet of antiquity is someone from outside our mental and psychological universe, even though he and his poetry may have played a part, and even a decisive part, in forming it. Studying that poet only through our own experiences of our own time, we run the risk of speaking too much of ourselves—of speaking indirectly of our own anxieties and our rational expedients—and but little of him. It is a risk that some among Vergil’s modern critics, even the intelligent and original, have not avoided.] (Il punto su Virgilio [Rome: Laterza, 1987], 7). Evidently! We might further point that Serpa is here speaking of failure to address one of “due operazioni critiche principali” [two primary tasks of literary criticism] when discussing a writer from the past, namely, “chiarire quale sia il nesso della nostra cultura di oggi con quello scrittore, quale affinità abbiamo con lui o quale distanza, psicologica e letteraria, che bisogno sentiamo, quali dubbi e quali conferme egli dia alle nostre certezze, quali sollecitazioni e quali ostacoli alla nostra mentalità critica” [to make clear what may be the connection between our present culture and that particular writer, what affinity we may have with him or what distance from him—psychological and literary—of which we need to be aware, what doubts and what confirmations he may give to our certainties, what requests and what challenges to our critical mentality] (Il punto su Virgilio, 3). 6. Quis mihi nunc tot acerba deus, quis carmine caedes diuersas obitumque ducum, quos aequore toto inque uicem nunc Turnus agit, nunc Troius heros, expediat? tanton placuit concurrere motu, Iuppiter, aeterna gentis in pace futuras? 7. Johnson in Lombardo, Virgil: Aeneid, xxv. 8. See, for example, Cicero’s presentation of the Stoic critique of Epicureans in On the Nature of the Gods 1.21–44. 9. Text and translation in R. D. Hicks, Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers (London: William Heinemann / Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925), 2:260–61. The Stoics themselves were not all in agreement as to what this meant. Diogenes Laertes claimed that, “Cleanthes indeed holds that all souls continue to exist until the general conflagration [μέχρι τη̑ς ἐκπυρώσεως]; but Chrysippus says that only the souls of the wise do so” (ibid.; compare 7.151). See further A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1:308–32. 10. This section of the De republica, often referred to as “The Dream of Scipio (Somnium Scipionis)” is both beautiful and powerful. In reading it, anyone familiar with Dante’s Paradiso will at once sense a connection, and correctly so. Both it and Macrobius’ commentary on it will certainly have been known by Dante (Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, Commentarium in Somnium Scipionis libri due, L. Scarpa ed. Padua, 1981]). See also Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, vol. 1 of Stoicism in Classical Latin Literature; 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 94–95.

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notes to pages 21–25 11. Non, mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum, ferrea uox, omnis scelerum comprendere formas, omnia poenarum percurrere nomina possim. 12. Pars pedibus plaudunt choreas et carmina dicunt nec non Threicius longa cum ueste sacerdos obloquitur numeris septem discrimina uocum . . . stant terra defixae hastae passimque soluti per campum pascuntur equi. quae gratia currum armorumque fuit uiuis, quae cura nitentis pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos.

13. Virgil: Aeneid, trans. Stanley Lombardo, with Introduction by W. R. Johnson (Indianapolis / Cambridge: Hackett, 2005), 152. 14. I have given a long quotation because Lucian is always worth reading; but he has much more to say in the same vein, as any one can see who cares to check his text. 15. Gregory Nagy, “The Sign of the Hero: A Prologue” in Jennifer K. Berenson Maclean and Ellen Bradshaw Aitken, Flavius Philostratus: Heroikos (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), xv. 16. Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Ancient Greek Poetry (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins, 1979), 208; the entire section, 170–210, is relevant. 17. See e.g. Maclean and Aitken, Heroikos, xliv–xlv. 18. Critical scholarship continues to be uncertain as to the precise tone of voice that we are expected to hear in Heroikos: “whether the text is serious or a spoof, whether its religion is real or idealised or wholly fantastical” (Jas’ Elsner, Review of Philostratus Heroikos: Religion and Cultural Identity in the Third Century C. E., by Ellen Bradshaw Aitken et al., Bryn Mawr Classical Review [online] 2005.07.11, http://bmcr. brynmawr.edu/2005/2005-07-11.html). For the point I wish to make here, however, this particular dispute is irrelevant. One does not “spoof” something unless someone else takes it seriously. As Nagy says: “it is essential to stress that the traditions of hero cults were evidently still alive in the era of Philostratus. Moreover, the archaic mentality of seeking communion with the consciousness of cult heroes was likewise still alive” (“Sign of the Hero,” xxxii). 19. See Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 63–68; Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 55–57. 20. Jon Davies, Death, Burial, and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1999), 30–32. 21. In Edouard Naville, Aegyptische Todtenbuch: der bis 18. bis 20. Dynastie: aus verschiedenen Urkunden, 3 vols. (Berlin: Asher, 1886), I: Pl. CXXI. 1–3; cited in Henk Milde, “‘Going out into the Day’: Ancient Egyptian Beliefs and Practices concerning Death” in Hidden Futures: Death and Immortality in Ancient Egypt, Anatolia, the Classical, Biblical and Arabic-Islamic World, ed. J. M. Bremer, Theo P. J. Van Den Hout, and Rudolph Peters (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994), 15. 22. “Only the Egyptians believe in resurrection, for they carefully preserve the corpses of the dead; for they have a custom of drying up the bodies and making

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them hard as bronze, they call them ‘Gabbaras.’” [Aegyptii soli credunt resurrectionem, quia diligenter currant cadavera mortuorum: morem enim habent siccare corpora et quasi aenea reddere, Gabbaras ea vocant]. (Augustine, Sermones 120 de Diversis, cap. 12). Thus, for example, Henk Milde: “The Egyptians did not strive after reincarnation of the Hindu type: rebirth in another body, i.e. as another person. They yearned for resurrection of their own body, because they wanted to remain the same person with the same name” (Milde, “ ‘Going out into the Day,’ ” 16; likewise Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 2 vols. [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947] 1:404). As early as 1834, the learned antiquarian Thomas Joseph Pettigrew (1791–1865) felt free to use the word “resurrection” in his description of Egyptian beliefs; in a chapter “On the Theology of the Ancient Egyptians, and Funeral Ceremonies of Different Nations,” he wrote, “Believing in the immortality of the soul, the ancient Egyptians conceived that they were retaining the soul within the body for as long as the form of the body could be preserved entire, or were facilitating the reunion of it with the body, at the day of resurrection, by preserving the body from corruption” (History of Egyptian Mummies (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, 1834), 13. Others, however, object to this use of the word. Jon Davies insists that we must distinguish Egyptian beliefs from resurrection hope because “the Egyptian fourfold concept of the person in effect sees it as immortal, with death providing more an opportunity for fulfillment, rather than experienced as a negation requiring a rebirth, a resurrection . . . There is, then, neither resurrection nor metempsychosis in Egyptian thanatology: the full, embodied person retains their life, ‘justified’ and revitalized” (Death, Burial, and Rebirth, 28, 30). In my view, Davies is not wrong to make a distinction between Jewish and Egyptian views of death and to see a difference therefore in the significance of “resurrection” in each. In contrast to Israel, “Egypt got on with death, as being in and of life. There was no eschatology, no apocalypse, no collective cataclysm, because there was no crisis. Death was life” (Death, Burial and Rebirth, 39). 23. For a convenient summary of Plato’s view in its context, see Terence Irwin, Classical Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 197–215. 24. See, for example, Plato, Phaedo 64c, 79a–81b. Plato’s best known presentation and discussion of the soul’s migration after death is, of course, the eschatological legend known as the “Myth of Er,” with which he concludes The Republic (10.614–21). Even with Plato and the various “Platonisms” we must, however, be careful not introduce an absolute ontological dichotomy between matter as opposed to non-matter, body as opposed to soul or mind, natural as opposed to supernatural, the physical as opposed to the spiritual – a dichotomy that is not, in fact, truly a characteristic of Platonism (or “Greek thought” as it is sometimes called) at all, but is rather characteristic of a way of conceiving the world that post-enlightenment thinking has inherited from Descartes. To put the matter crudely, even for Platonists, the soul, like the body, was still composed of “stuff ” – the distinction was that it was composed of finer “stuff,” “stuff ” that partook of the divine realm, rather than the realm of earth. Naturally therefore this finer “stuff” had a future in that divine realm, whereas the cruder “stuff ” had not: or, to put it as (I suspect) some of Paul’s Corinthians were to

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put it, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption” (1 Cor 15;50, on which see pages 46–47, 61–62; see further Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995] especially 3–15). 25. Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1:31, 50, 289. 26. “Scies ultra statuta fato tuo spatia vitam quoque tibi prorogare mihi tantum licere.” [Know that I—and I alone—can even prolong your life beyond the limits determined by your fate.] (Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.6, trans. J. Arthur Hanson). 27. The issue is debated; see Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome, 1:290, and literature there cited. Although the cult was widely known throughout the Roman world, no written word about it by its own members has survived, save a few enigmatic fragments and graffiti. All other writing about Mithraism comes to us from those who were not members of the cult and were even hostile to it. 28. Homer’s Odyssey is something of an exception, in that in it the dead are not reckoned to have any special wisdom; elsewhere, and in general, the presumed “wisdom” of the dead (accounted for in various ways) seems virtually axiomatic, and where necromancy is practiced, desire to learn from this wisdom is generally the motive for it (as it was with Saul in the Old Testament); see Daniel Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), xxiv, 231–50. 29. Reimarus, Fragments, ed. Charles H. Talbert, trans. Ralph S. Fraser (London: SCM, 1971), 251, 255. 30. Oscar Cullmann, “Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead,” in Immortality and Resurrection, ed. Krister Stendahl (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 9–53; for a critique see George W. E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism. Expanded edition. [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006] 219–23. 31. C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994–98), 2:854; similarly Johannes Munck: “The idea of the resurrection of the dead was foreign to Greek thought . . . The individual soul might well be immortal, but Greeks were unwilling to think of a resurrection of the body” (The Acts of the Apostles [New York: Doubleday, 1967], 172). 32. Citing Homer, Iliad 24.549–51, in E. V. Rieu’s translation. 33. Alluding to Iliad 24.756. 34. Citing Aeschylus, Eumenides 647–48, in H. Weir Smyth and H. LloydJones’s translation. 35. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 32; see the whole section, 32–84. 36. For comparison with Luke 7:11–17, see e.g. Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke, 2 vols. AB 28, 28A (New York: Doubleday, 1981–83), 1:656–57; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, SP 3 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1991), 120; François Bovon, Luke 1, trans. Christine M. Thomans, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 269. Christopher P. Jones, Philostratus: Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 1:419, note 70, compares it to the raising of Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:35–43). 37. So, e.g., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, SJ, The Gospel according to Luke, 2 vols, AB 28, 28A (New York: Doubleday, 1981–85), 1:657.

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38. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 74. 39. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 33, 35. 40. Hence Celsus is clear that Christians are “blind of spirit and crippled of soul, teaching a doctrine that relates only to the body and living in the hope of raising a dead thing to life” (R. Joseph Hoffmann, Celsus on the True Doctrine: A Discourse against the Christians [New York: Oxford University Press, 1987], 112; cf. 110). 41. See above, page 24. 42. For dating Apollodorus the Historian (or “Pseudo-Apollodorus”), see Sir James George Frazer, Apollodorus: The Library (Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard University Press / London: William Heinemann, 1921), xvi; Michael Simpson, Gods and Heroes of the Greeks: The Library of Apollodorus (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), 1; Robin Hard, Apollodorus: The Library of Greek Mythology, WC (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), xi–xii. 43. Other ancient versions of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice include Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.4–6; Virgil, Georgics 4.453–527; Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.1–85. 44. Text in A. M. Dale, Euripides Alcestis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954); text and translation in D. J. Conacher, Euripides Alcestis (Warminster: Aris and Philips, 1988). Conacher’s translation is careful and literal, and so I have made use of it in my discussion. Any who, without Greek, wish to get a general feel for Euripides’ poetic drama, or those who wish to consider performing it, will, I think, be better served by William Arrowsmith’s (close but not literal) translation into English verse, Euripides Alcestis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974). 45. For the passage in the Symposium, see above, page 32. With regard to Euripides’ play, I say “more or less” since, according to Euripides, Hercules’ opponent was actually Thanatos (“Death’) rather than Hades. Which of these was the earlier form of the legend is a matter for discussion; see, e.g., Dale, Euripides Alcestis, viii, xi–xii; Albin Lesky, Greek Tragic Poetry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983 [1972]), 209; Conacher, Euripides Alcestis (1988), 30–35. 46. Other accounts of Aesculapius’ power to reverse death include a number of striking references in Euripides, Alcestis (3–6, 121–29, 969–72). A story of how “the Epidaurian god [i.e., Aesculapius] brought Androgeos / back to his father’s hearth with herbs from Cressa” [et deus exstinctum Cressis Epidaurius herbis / restituit patriis Androgeona focis] is given in Propertius, Elegies 2.1.57–66 (written at the end of the first century B.C.). An account given by Ovid (Fasti 6.737–62, composed about 8 A.D.) tells of his raising Hippolytus from the dead after that virtuous young man had been killed as a result of Phaedra’s curse (an element in the Hippolytus tradition that does not occur in either Euripides’ or Seneca’s dramas about him but is found in Virgil’s Aeneid [7.761–82]). Ovid goes on to speak of the jealousy of Clotho and Dis, the gods of the underworld, that lead Jupiter to kill Aesculapius (“exemplum veritus, direxit in illum / Fulmina, qui nimiae moverat artis opem” [Fasti 7.59–60]), and of Aesculapius’ subsequent godhead. 47. Another account of Protesilaus suggests that Laodamia had prayed to the gods only that Protesilaus might be restored to her for three hours. Her prayer was

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granted, and at the end of that time she died in his arms (Hyginus, Genealogiae [Fabulae] 103; similarly, according to Virgil’s commentator Servius, “Laodamia uxor Protesilai fuit; quae cum maritum in bello Troiano primum perisse cognovisset, optavit ut eius umbram videret: qua re concessa non deserens eam, in eius amplexibus periit” [Commentary on the Aeneid of Virgil, 6.447]). Euripides made her the subject of a play called Protesilaos which unfortunately has not survived (see Euripidis perditarum tragoediarum fragmenta, ed. Augustus Nauck, Euripidis Tragoediae 3 [Leipzig: Teubner, 1885] 144–75. frag. 649–58). There is a bawdily comical, but also somewhat oblique, reference to Protesilaus’ being raised from the dead in Petronius’ Satyricon, composed at some time during the reign of Nero; the fact that Petronius expects his audience to understand the joke is in itself evidence of how widely known the story was. On the story of Protesilaus and Laodamia see further Paul A. Holloway, who discusses it as an example of the “beloved portrait” topos: see “Portrait and Presence: A Note on the Visio Procli, (George of Alexandria, Vita Chrysostomi 27)” in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 100.1 (2000): 74–76. 48. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 67, 68. 49. Stanley E. Porter, “Resurrection, the Greeks, and the New Testament,” in Resurrection, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 52–81; Paul M. Fullmer, Resurrection in Mark’s Literary-Historical Perspective (London: T. and T. Clark, 2007). Porter certainly shows that Greeks and Romans thought about life after death, but his initial claim that “the Greeks did have a significant tradition of bodily resurrection” (53) does not appear to me to be sustained. Indeed, I am struck by the fact that when he arrives at the appropriate point in his paper to discuss this issue, his claim for “Greek and Roman religion” has mutated into an assertion that it had “a shockingly strong tradition of contemplation of the soul’s destiny in the afterlife, along with examples of bodily resurrection” (68)—which is hardly the same thing. Fullmer has assembled a quantity of useful evidence and makes some telling points. I believe that he is right to see a stylistic connection between Mark and other popular literature, including light romantic novels such as Callirhoe (indeed, I made the same point myself some years ago: see Christopher Bryan, Preface to Mark: Notes on the Gospel in Its Literary and Cultural Settings [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991], 53–54, 159–60). But I doubt Fullmer is wise to go on from this basis to determine that “novelistic literature” provided Mark not only with “a style” but also with “a set of motifs and themes, and a basic narrative structure” that he could follow without envisioning any further “specific generic designation” (57). Indeed, leaving aside my own work in this connection, it is surely unwise not to have considered the arguments of Richard Burridge, whose discussion of the genre of the gospels has been available since 1992 and remains seminal (What Are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, 2nd ed. [Grand Rapids and Cambridge, England: Eerdmans, 2004]; originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1992 as SNTSMS 70). 50. See Dale, Euripides Alcestis, xii–xiv; Lesky, Greek Tragic Poetry, 209; Conacher, Euripides Alcestis, 31. There is also a reference to the cycle of legend in which Alcestis figures in Aeschylus’ Eumenides 723–24 (cited in Porter, “Resurrection,” 79–80).

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51. Thus, it is suggested by some that in his reference to Alcestis’ being celebrated in “rich and prosperous Athens” Euripides was obliquely referring to his own play, which Conacher seems to think likely (Euripides Alcestis, 174) and Dale does not (Euripides Alcestis, 90). 52. Text and translation in Vincent Katz,The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius. (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004) 100–101. 53. J. Stevenson, The Catacombs: Rediscovered Monuments of Early Christianity (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), 121 and plate 95. Alcestis is also presented in this light in the c. 420 epinetron discovered in an Eretrian tomb and at present on display in the National Museum in Athens; see François Lissarrague, “Figures of Women” in A History of Women: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints, ed. Pauline Schmitt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 158–59; see further Sonia Mucznik, Devotion and Unfaithfulness: Alcestis and Phaedra in Roman Art (Rome: G. Bretschneider, 1999); Paul Holloway, “Portrait and Presence,” 73–74. Of course Wright is aware of material such as this (see, e.g., Resurrection of the Son of God, 66 and n. 198); it is simply that he is not inclined to attach to it quite as much significance as I do. 54. For a general description, see L. V. Rutgers, Subterranean Rome (Louven: Peeters, 2000), 39–40, 60. 55. See Sonia Mucznik, “The Alcestis Sarcophagus at Saint Aignan: a New Interpretation” (online at www.tau.ac.il/arts/projects/PUB/assaph-art/assaph2/ articles_assaph2/01Mucznik.pdf). 56. Eve D’Ambra, Roman Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 124. D’Ambra’s further comment also deserves quotation: the myth “could serve as a script for heroic action even for those who lived rather humdrum bourgeois lives . . . The homely virtues of everyday lives are ennobled by the testing of Alcestis’ virtue and her triumphant return from the underworld with Hercules in tow” (ibid.). Sonia Mucznik says of the Saint Aignon portrayal that “Alcestis, restored to the world of the living after having sacrificed her life for her husband, serves as an image of both virtue and rebirth” (“Alcestis Sarcophagus,” 8). 57. The Via Latina catacomb is, it should be said, no ordinary catacomb, but was clearly the property of wealthy families. As J. Stevenson pointed out some years ago, “Either these families were made up of both Christians and pagans and did not eschew the fact of being buried together, or, if they were entirely Christian, they felt no repugnance to the classical stories. Perhaps the pictures indicate that in certain circles relations between adherents of the old and new religions were far more friendly than our literary sources admit, or that Christians found in the old stories material not inconsistent with their faith” (Stevenson, The Catacombs, 125 and plate 100; see also Janet Huskinson, “The Later Roman Empire,” in The Oxford History of Classical Art, ed. John Boardman [New York: Oxford, 2001], 318 and plate 316). Either way, either merely within paganism, or else via paganism to Christianity, it seems hard not to suppose that Alcestis’ return from the dead was something of an icon for some—and, for those who placed it on their tombs, a symbol of hope. The other phenomenon to which Stevenson points—the ability of the Christian religion and classical mythology

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to live together—is, of course, illustrated elsewhere: for example, by a coin representing Constantine the Great, which shows him carrying a shield with the motif of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, while his helmet is adorned with the Chi-Rho symbol. In the same spirit is the elegant wedding box of Secundus and Projecta (late fourth century) from the Esquiline Hill at Rome (now in the British Museum). The gilded silver box is for toilet articles and is decorated with beautifully chased and engraved motifs of Venus, cupids, and the scene of a woman’s toilette; at the same time, an inscription on the edge of the box between the lid and the body says, “Secunde et Projecta vivatis in Christo” [Secundus and Projecta, may you live in Christ] (see D’Ambra, Roman Art, 161–63 and plates 112, 113, and 114). Again D’Ambra’s comment bears quotation; “It is most likely that the combination of pagan and Christian elements caused no comment, and that the inscription and mythological motifs were not antithetical to the fourth century viewer, who would have taken pleasure in the costly materials and the skilled work of the container. The gleaming surface with its gilt figures on silver creates rich effects with the frothy ornament of the goddess’s attendants, the sea creatures and nereids (sea nymphs) defined by swirling lines and arabesques. A container with such exquisite motifs conveying the tasks and delights of feminine beauty would not have been out of place in a Christian home in which even seemingly frivolous activities reflected, initially, the love of a wife for her husband, and, ultimately, their love of the Lord. It is a credit to the foresight and flexibility of the early Church that it accommodated a range of activities and habits of consumption” (Roman Art, 163). Such coexistence of pagan and Christian imagery will later find glorious fruit in Dante’s Commedia and in countless texts such as that by Carlo Sigismundo Capece set by George Frideric Handel in his Oratorio per la Resurrezione di Nostro Signor Gesù Cristo (first performed on Easter Sunday, 1708, in Rome) wherein the Angel’s aria, Disservatevi, o porte d’Averno, clearly associates pagan and Christian motifs. This coexistence between the pagan and the Christian in art is evident, we should note, in the realm of the theological and the spiritual as well as in the aesthetic, as is manifest in the close connection between ancient pagan spiritual exercises and early Christian “philosophy”; see Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995 [1987]), 126–40 and throughout. (If I ventured a criticism of Hadot’s magnificent opus, it would be that in pointing to the tradition regarding Christianity as a “philosophy” that is evident in the Apologists of the second century, he does not make clear that this by no means began with the Apologists but was present as early as Paul, whose Letter to the Romans, as I and others have shown, already has the form of a protreptic, which is a type of address associated in Hellenistic tradition either with the choice of a particular philosophical school or else with the choice of philosophy itself; see further Christopher Bryan, A Preface to Romans: Notes on the Epistle in Its Literary and Cultural Setting [Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000], 18–27, and literature there cited). 58. Paul Ricoeur, “Interpretative Narrative” (trans. David Pellauer) in The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory, ed. Regina Schwartz (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 237.

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59. For what it is worth, I note the following: Geoffrey Chaucer, Prologue to The Legende of Good Women (1372–86); John Milton, Sonnet XIX (1673); Jean-Baptiste Lully with Philippe Quinault, Alceste, ou Le triomphe d’Alcide (1674); Jean Racine, preface to Iphigénie (1674); Georg Frideric Handel with Nicola Haym, Admeto, re di Tessaglia (1727); Christophe Willibord Gluck with Ranieri di Cazalbigi, Alceste (1767, Italian version); Gluck with Marie François Louis Gand Leblanc Roullet, Alceste (1776, French version); Paul Cezanne, “The Abduction” (possibly Alcestis legend, 1867); William Morris, “The Love of Alcestis” in The Earthly Paradise (1868–70); Frederick Leighton, “Hercules Wresting with Death for the Body of Alcestis” (1869–70); Robert Browning, Balaustion’s Adventure (1871, celebrating Euripides’ Alcestis in particular); Auguste Rodin, “The Death of Alcestis” (1899); Rutland Boughton with Gilbert Murray, Alkestis (1922); Egon Wellesz with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Alkestis (1923); Maurice Valency, The Thracian Horses (1942); Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Cocktail Party (Celia) (1949); E. W. Eschmann, Alkestis (1950); Judith Rothschild, “Alcestis” (1960); and Armin Petras, Alkestis, mon Amour (2005). I scarcely imagine that the foregoing list even approaches completeness. Even so, I find it impressive. See Gustav Adolf Seeck, Euripides. Alkestis. Griechische Dramen (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 25–29. 60. Hence, in my view Joseph Fitzmyer’s implied (virtually en passant) assessment of the significance of the Alcestis legend is a good deal closer to the mark than Wright’s; see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, SJ, First Corinthians, AYB 32 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 562.

chapter 3 1. To what extent these two traditions may originally have circulated separately and independently of each other, and to what extent, as the texts in the form we have them imply, they were from a very early stage bound up with each other – this is, and is likely to remain, one of the most disputed questions in New Testament scholarship. Different aspects of the question involve (1) what Paul (and others) may have understood by the references to burial and resurrection in the apostolic formula that he quotes at 1 Corinthians 15.3–4 (on which see ch. 4, pages 50–51, and n. 34); (2) whether Mark himself created the empty tomb / disappeance-of-Jesus tradition at 16.1–8 as a way of narrating Jesus’ resurrection; (3) whether Mark received the tradition, but was responsible for first combining it with the resurrection / appearance tradition; and (4) whether the empty tomb tradition (the primitive resurrection proclamation by the women) is actually older than the appearance traditions (on these last three questions see chapter 5, n. 47). 2. This point is made, in one way or another, by passage after passage in the New Testament; see, e.g., Mark 16:6 // Matt 28:5 // Luke 24:5b–7, 30–31; John 20:16, 19–20, 24–29; 21:7, 20–22; Acts 2:22–24; 3:13–16; 5:23–20; 10:40–41; Rom 1:3–4; 4:24–25; 1 Cor 15:3–8; Eph 1:15–2:18; Phil 2:6–11; Col 1:18–20; 1 Thess 4:14; Heb 2:5–18, 4:14–15; 13:20; 1 John 5:4–12 (on which, with regard to the point at issue, see further John Painter, 1, 2, and 3 John, SP 18 [Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press,

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2002], 309–11; Raymond Brown, The Epistles of John, AB 30 [New York: Doubleday, 1982], 594–603); 1 Pet 3:18–22; 1 Tim 4:16; 2 Tim 2:8; Rev 2:18. 3. A. M. Ramsey, The Resurrection of Christ: An Essay in Biblical Theology (London: Geoffrey Bles, Centenary Press, 1945), 12. 4. The relevance of Acts 1.41 to my point is open to dispute, but see further chapter 7, n. 100. 5. On the force of John 20:17, see my discussion on pages 141–44. 6. On Luke 24:36–43, see my discussion on page 115; on John 20:24–27, see page 147. In any case—and particularly in the case of the Johannine narrative—there is evidently a great deal more going on in these narratives than merely apologetic. 7. See, e.g., Sir Henry Chadwick, “Origen, Celsus, and the Resurrection of the Body” HTR 16 (1958): 83–102, reprinted in Henry Chadwick, Studies in Ancient Christianity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) v. 8. See pages 46–47, 58–63. 9. For example, Marcus J. Borg, in Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 132–33. Borg’s further assertion that Paul’s experience on the Damascus road was a vision “as we know from its threefold narration in Acts 9, 22, and 26” (Meaning of Jesus, 132) is, as an account of the narratives of Paul’s conversion in Acts, incorrect; see further additional note F: “Further Reflections on Paul’s Understanding of Resurrection as involving a Transformed Physicality.” 10. See BDAG, “ὁράω,” and LS, “ὁράω,” for the wide range of senses in which this verb can be used—all depending, of course, on context; for LXX usage in particular see LEH, “ὁράω” and M, “ὁράω”. See further Wilhelm Michaelis, “ὁράω κτλ,” in TDNT 5:315–67; Daniel A. Smith, Revisiting the Empty Tomb: The Early History of Easter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010) 15–16. 11. See further additional note F: “Further Reflections on Paul’s Understanding of Resurrection as involving a Transformed Physicality.” 12. BDAG, “ἐγείρω,” 1, 2; cf. LS, “ἐγείρω,” I, 1, 2; also for LXX usage see LEH, “ἐγείρω” and M, “ἐγείρω.” 13. BDAG, “ἀνίστημι,” 1, 6; cf. LS, “ἀνίστημι,” A I, B, I; also for LXX usage see LEH, “ἀνίστημι” and MG, “ἀνίστημι.” 14. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, esp. 31, 201. 15. Wright, Resurrection, 30–31, 201–2. Of course, and as James H. Charlesworth has recently pointed out, a concept such as resurrection does not reside in one or two words, and we will not come to understand it simply “by isolating a word or a number of words, thinking that ideas can be conveyed by one word in isolation” (“Where Does the Concept of Resurrection Appear and How Do We Know That?” in James H. Charlesworth et al., Resurrection, [New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006], 1). But that does not mean that the ways in which key words were used may be safely ignored. It means only that, as I noted in my discussion of ὁράω above, our questions about them must be specific to the contexts in which they occur. For our purpose, then, it is not a matter of how ἐγείρω and ἀνίστημι were used in general or what meanings they could possibly bear in any context but, rather, how do they or their cognates seem to have

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been understood in this particular connection?—that is, when they were used with reference to the dead? How could those who used such terms in such a context expect to be heard? Those are the important questions—and they are the questions that Wright has addressed. 16. See above page 36. 17. At Mark 5:21–43, it is evident that the evangelist intends us to understand that Jairus’ daughter is actually dead, and that Jesus’ action therefore shows that even death is subject to him; so C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel according to Saint Mark, rev. ed. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977 [1959]), 188–89; Sherman E. Johnson, The Gospel according to St. Mark (Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1960), 108; Augustine Stock, OSB, The Method and Message of Mark (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1989), 174; Morna D. Hooker, The Gospel according to St. Mark (A. & C. Black, 1991), 150; Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2001), 189–90; John R. Donahue, S. J., and Daniel J. Harrington, S. J., The Gospel of Mark, SP 2 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002), 177; M. Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 162; Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 285. Apart from any other considerations, Mark’s overall narrative structure requires this interpretation, for Mark is engaged in showing us Jesus’ sovereign power in a series of liminal situations, of which death is evidently the culminating and most terrifying (see Christopher Bryan, A Preface to Mark: Notes on the Gospel in Its Literary and Cultural Settings [New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993] 93–94; Douglas W. Geyer, Fear, Anomaly, and Uncertainty in the Gospel of Mark [Lanham: Scarecrow, 2002], 169–70; and Marie Noonan Sabin, Reopening the Word: Reading Mark as Theology in the Context of Early Judaism [New York: Oxford, 2002], 162, 190). In this respect, the narrative stands in sharp contrast to Philostratus’ account of Apollonius of Tyana raising a dead girl to life, wherein it is evident that the narrator is doing everything in his power to make clear to his readers that he is not claiming that Apollonius raised the dead (see above, pages 28–29). Jesus’ statement at 5:39 (“The child is not dead, but sleeping” [τὸ παιδίον οὐκ ἀπέθανεν ἀλλὰ καθεύδει) is therefore properly heard as an affirmation of God’s power in such situations and, indeed, as reaffirming what has already been said at 5:36: “Do not fear, only believe” (μή ϕοβοῦ, μόνον πίστευε). As Witherington points out, “sleep is the term a person uses for death when one believes in the resurrection” (Mark, 189). With Jesus’ reference to “sleep” at this point we may then properly compare 1 Thess 4:13–18; John 11:11–14; and 1 Cor 15:6, 18, 20, 51 (NRSV’s paraphrasing Paul by rendering, e.g., his ἐκοιμήθησαν at 15:6 as “have died” is unhelpful; earlier versions that preserved the metaphor by a phrase such as “have fallen asleep” [e.g., KJV, Douey-Rheims, RV, RSV] did better). In the light of all this, I would suggest that the caution exercised by Vincent Taylor (The Gospel according to St. Mark [London: MacMillan, 1957], 295) and Francis J. Moloney, SDB (The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2002], 110) over whether the young woman in Mark’s narrative is to be understood as “really” dead is not only unnecessary but misleading. As for James H. Charlesworth’s categorization of the

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narrative as an example of “Raising of the Individual from the Sickbed to Health” (“Where Does the Concept of Resurrection Appear and How Do We Know That?” in Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine, ed. James H. Charlesworth et al. [New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006]) —the kindest thing one can say of it is that it is eccentric. 18. Traditions of Jesus raising the dead also persisted orally in the Christian community. Eusebius, for example, preserves the following by the second century Christian apologist Quadratus (fl. ca. 124), addressing the Emperor Hadrian: “But the works of our Savior were permanent, for they were real. To be precise, those who were healed, those who rose from the dead, did not merely seem to be healed or raised, but were also permanently present, and not merely when the Savior was on earth, but also after his departure they lived for a considerable time, inasmuch as some of them survived even to our own time” (Eusebius, HE 4.3.2; for discussion of this passage, see Robert M. Grant, Greek Apologists of the Second Century [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988], 35–36). 19. It has occasionally been suggested that ἐν δυνάμει should be taken as qualifying ὁρισθέντος rather than υἱοῦ θεοῦ (e.g., W. Sanday and A. C. Headlam, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1895], 9). That suggestion, though grammatically possible, appears to me on general grounds to be implausible, and I follow the interpretation of υἱοῦ θεοῦ ἐν δυνάμει as “Son-of-God-in-power” preferred by most exegetes (e.g., Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980], 12; C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 2 vols, ICC [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975–79], 1:62; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 33 [New York: Doubleday, 1993], 235; N. T. Wright, “Romans” in The New Interpreters Bible [Nashville: Abingdon, 2002], 10:418–19; James D. G. Dunn, Romans, 2 vols., WBC 38 [Dallas: Word, 1988], 1:14). Many commentators, though not all, believe that Paul is here quoting from a pre-Pauline text (see Christopher Bryan, A Preface to Romans: Notes on the Epistle in Its Literary and Cultural Setting [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 60–61. 20. These lines may be Paul’s own composition (so, e.g., N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991 / Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992], 57) or, as most commentators believe, Paul may be quoting them from an already existing hymn (Oscar Cullmann, The Earliest Christian Confessions, trans. J. K. S. Reid [London: Lutterworth, 1949], 22; F. W. Beare, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians [London: Adam & Charles Black, 1959], 77; Bonnie B. Thurston and Judith M. Ryan, Philippians and Philemon [Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2005], 86 [cautiously]; John Reumann, Philippians, AYB 33B [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008], 361–65 [Reumann argues for composition by the Philippians themselves]). For our present purposes, the right in this debate does not matter. Paul approved of the sentiments expressed. If Paul is quoting from someone else’s composition, that would, however, serve to illustrate something else, namely, Paul’s own claim that what he proclaimed was not his

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proclamation but rather the proclamation of the church, precisely as he had “received” it (1 Cor 15:3). 21. The expression ὁ θεὸς αὐτὸν ὑπερύψωσεν (literally, “God has superexalted him”) refers implicitly to Jesus’ resurrection even though, of course, it goes much further than the simple affirmation “God has raised him from the dead.” 22. See J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, rev. ed. (London: Macmillan, 1881), 113–14; Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament, trans. Shirley C. Guthrie and Charles A. M. Hall (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959 [1957]), 180–81, 217–18; Cullman, Earliest Christian Confessions, 55; R. H. Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology (New York: Charles Scribners, 1965), 213–14; Martin Hengel, The Son of God: The Origins of Christology and the History of Jewish-Hellenistic Religion, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM / Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976 [1975]), 76, 87; Wright, Climax of the Covenant, 86–90; Raymond E. Brown, SS, An Introduction to New Testament Christology (New York: Paulist, 1994), 114–15; A. W. Zwiep, The Ascension of the Messiah in Lukan Christology, SNT 87 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 124; Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 25–42, esp. 34; Charles B. Cousar, Reading Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians: A Literary and Theological Commentary (Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys, 2001), 154; Reumann, Philippians, 372 (who sees the hymn as directly anti-Roman). It is, as Hengel observed, “understandable that bold christological sketches of this kind were not first presented in the form of speculative prose, but in hymns inspired by the spirit (I Cor. 14.26; cf. Col. 3.16; Eph. 5.19; Rev. 5.9 etc.); the language most appropriate to God’s ‘inexpressible grace’ (II Cor. 9.15) was the hymn of praise inspired by the Spirit” (Son of God, 76). 23. This precise question is not pursued, but it is certainly raised by Borg in Borg and Wright, Meaning of Jesus, 130; similarly Marianne Sawicki, Seeing the Lord: Resurrection and Early Christian Practices (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 4–5. 24. See above, pages 14–17. 25. N. T Wright and John Dominic Crossan both describe the phenomenon that I am discussing as a “mutation,” and I have no quarrel with that. I prefer my own “continuity” and “discontinuity” only because “mutation,” at least in some modern usage, appears to me to carry a certain pejorative sense (“Mutants!”), but see Wright and Crossan’s own comments in N. T. Wright and John Dominic Crossan, “The Resurrection: Historical Event or Theological Explanation: A Dialogue,” in The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue, ed. Robert B. Stewart (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 18–20, 25. What we are agreed on, I believe, is this: that as Marianne Sawicki puts it, “the culturally available imagery of ‘rising from the dead’ was not a good fit for the case of Jesus; what was happening with him would have to be forced into that mold, with not inconsiderable warping of the mold” (Seeing the Lord, 264). 26. On 1 Cor 15:20–28, see further pages 55–57. 27. “The purpose of God’s gifts and promises is that believers may become sharers or partakers (koinōnoi) in the deity” (Daniel J. Harrington, S. J., in Donald

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P. Senior, C. P., and Daniel J. Harrington, S. J., 1 Peter, Jude, and 2 Peter, SP 15 [Collegeville, Minn.; Liturgical Press, 2003], 244). 28. On Acts 1:9–11, see further pages 119–21. 29. On 1 Cor 15:8, see further page 52. 30. On Matt 28:20, see further pages 99–100. 31. On John 21:22–23, see further pages 155–56. 32. “That even after his Resurrection the Lord is present to faith and not to sight constitutes an eschatological detour; it is because the Lord has come but nevertheless is yet to come that the church’s life is sacramental. The Lord’s return will restore his people to the main road, ending the detour” (Jenson, ST 2:334–35). 33. Compare Crossan and Wright in Dialogue, 27.

chapter 4 1. Solomon Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology: Major Concepts of the Talmud (New York: Schocken, 1961 [1909]), 46. 2. J. Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 11–16. The most important area where we appear to find inconsistencies in Paul is in his references to the Law (νόμος): by which, with a very few exceptions, it is clear that he generally means torah, the Jewish Law. No one has drawn attention to this more clearly than Heikki Räisänen, who considers some of Paul’s inconsistencies to be not merely apparent but real. Thus, on some occasions Paul “states in unambiguous terms that the law has been abolished” while at othes he makes “positive statements which imply that the law is still valid” (Paul and the Law [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986 [1983] 199; and passim). Räisänen’s analysis is always careful and has been unfairly caricatured by some who disagree with him. It is certainly true that Paul’s expressions on the subject of the Law show a surprising variety of tone and expression. Räisanen is, of course, not the only person to have noticed this, nor does he claim to be. All this granted, it is still the case that I am not persuaded by a number of elements in Räisänen’s analysis. Thus, I do not read as he does any of the passages in Romans that he cites as examples of Paul’s claiming that the law has been abolished. At Rom 3:27 the contrast that Paul makes between a “Law of works” and a “Law of faith” still appears to me, when taken in the context of the letter as a whole, to read most naturally not as a contrast between Jewish Law and some other law or “principle,” or between the Jewish Law and “faith,” but as a contrast between the Jewish Law understood as a basis in itself of human standing before God (cf. Rom 9:30–33), and the Jewish Law understood as a witness to God’s faithfulness and mercy (cf. Rom 3:21–22); in which respect, pace Räisänen, Paul is not at 3:27 speaking of “the role of the Torah in the Christ event” (Paul and the Law 51), but of the role of a properly understood Torah in excluding “boasting” (Bryan, Preface to Romans 106; see further Cranfield, Romans 1.219–20, Dunn, Romans 1.185–86; contrast Räisanen, Paul and the Law 50–52).

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At Rom 8:2, where Räisänen again sees a distinction between Jewish law and another “law” (Paul and the Law 52), I must again disagree. In this instance I am aware that in disagreeing with Räisänen I am also disagreeing with many other commentators. Nevertheless, it appears to me in the light of the whole process of Paul’s argument that when he speaks at Rom 8:2 of “the Law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus” that frees one from “from the Law of sin and death,” it is most probably not two different “Laws” of which he speaks, but the same Law—the Mosaic Law— understood in different ways. Understood as if it were in itself a way to salvation, the Law simply shows me my sin (Rom. 3:20) and condemns me to death: it becomes, in other words, a Law of sin and death. Understood in dependence upon God’s Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the Law itself witnesses to the truth of God’s grace (compare Rom. 3:21). Paul goes on to spell this out: through Christ God has achieved “what is impossible for Law insofar as it is weak through the flesh” (8:3a: compare Rom 9:30–33): which is to say, “God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin-offering, condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (8:3b–4a) – and that is what Paul meant when he said that “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” sets one free from “the law of sin and death.” In other words, as N. T. Wright points out, Rom 8:3–4 explains 8:2; and, indeed, 8:5–6 carries the explanation further (Climax of the Covenant 201). (See further C. E. B. Cranfield, “St. Paul and the Law” SJT 17 [1964] 66 [Cranfield has subsequently changed his mind, see his Romans 1.375–76; but I find his statement of his original view more convincing than his statement of the alleged “objection” to it]; Ulrich Wilckens, Der Brief an Die Römer. EKK 6. 3 vols. [Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978–82] 122–23; Dunn, Romans 1.416–418; Wright, Climax of the Covenant 194–216; Bryan, Preface to Romans 146; contrast e.g. Käsemann, Romans 215, Fitzmyer, Romans 482–83). In my opinion my most significant difference from Räisänen is, however, in regard to Rom 10:4. Crucial here is, of course, the vexed question as to how we are to understand τέλος (“end”). Does it mean “end” as “termination,” or “end” as “goal”? Pace Räisänen, after reading his analysis of this passage, I still have not the slightest doubt that the interpretation of τέλος as “goal,” as I set it out in my Preface to Romans, is broadly correct (Preface to Romans 168, 171–72; cf. Cranfield, Romans 2.515–20). Indeed, I am indebted to Räisänen for actually strengthening my conviction in this direction by the force with which he points out that the “‘goal’ interpretation [of τέλος] ties in with Rom 9:30–33,” that is, with the context prior to 10.4 (Paul and the Law 53). Apropos 9.30–33 he writes, “It would be a fair summary of this passage to say that Christ is the goal of the law” (54). This is true, and it is a point that I did not emphasize sufficiently in my own discussion of the passage. Why then does Räisänen go to deny the “goal” sense for Rom 10:4? For the following reason: “The τέλος statement Rom 10.4 does not, however, follow immediately after 9.33. There is a break after that verse: in 10.1 a new passage is clearly opened with the address ‘brethren’ ” (ibid). With respect, this simply will not do. Paul’s use of ἀδελϕοί gives us no ground whatever for seeing a “break” here. Rather the

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reverse. Paul seems generally to use ἀδελϕοί when he wishes to emphasize his closeness to those to whom he is writing: perhaps because there is rebuke or criticism in what he says and he wishes to soften it (1 Cor 1:11, 26, 11:33, 12:1); perhaps because he is about to show his audience a μυστήριον (Rom 11:25–27, 1 Cor 15:50–51); or perhaps because he is speaking personally and wishes to be heard as offering a confidence (cf. Rom 1:13, 15:30). In such cases, the word may come at the beginning of a new section (1 Cor 12:1) or it may come in the middle or at the end (Rom 1:13, 1 Cor 11:33): but use of the word in itself tells us nothing of that. That is a matter that can only be determined from the context. What then does the context tell us at Rom. 10.1? Why is Paul speaking so personally? Evidently, he speaks personally because he particularly wishes his audience to be aware of his prayers for and his concern for Israel’s salvation, and of the degree to which he honors Israel’s abiding faith. And why does he wish to do that? Evidently, because he has just been critical of Israel, and is about to be critical again (9:30–33 especially 32, and 10:2–3). In other words, 10:1 reaches both forward and back. Far from intruding a “break,” 10:1 is then a hinge, designed to condition the way in which Paul’s audience will reflect both on what he has already said at 9:30–33, and to lead up to what he is about to say at 10:2–4. If this be so—and I honestly do not see how Paul’s rhetoric at this point may reasonably be seen to work otherwise—then there is emphatically not a break between 9:33 and 10:1: in which case the argument for hearing a contradiction between 9:30–33 and 10:4, and (by the same token) the argument for hearing τέλος in any sense other than “goal,” collapses. 10:5 following, with γὰρ, is evidently intended to unpack what has gone before: of which suffice it for the present note to say that I do not find Cranfield’s (and Karl Barth’s) exegesis nearly as “peculiar” as does Räisänen (Paul and the Law 54 n.56; contrast Cranfield, Romans 2.520–25; Karl Barth, A Shorter Commentary on Romans, D. H. van Daalen, trans. [London: SCM, 1959 (1956)] 127; Bryan, Preface to Romans 168). Another passage which clearly has a bearing on the question is 2 Cor 3:7–13, on which see additional note G, “Further Reflections on Paul’s Understanding of Our Present Experience of Transformation In and Through [0]Christ,” n. 3. 3. Rudolf Bultmann has often been cited as the proponent of such a view; critics point, for example, to his Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel (London: SCM, 1952–55), 238–39, or to his The Second Letter to the Corinthians, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985 [1976]), 155. Bultmann’s comments on this matter (as on many others) are actually much more nuanced than some of his critics allow; therefore, see also the careful remarks of C. K. Barrett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (London: A. and C. Black, 1973), 170–71. 4. Richard Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3.1–4.11 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983), 5. “There was no lack of opportunity for Paul and other missionaries to learn something about Jesus’ words. And indeed the letters of Paul demonstrate that he was familiar with a tradition of Jesus’ sayings, even though they did not become a part of the message that he and others proclaimed” (Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development [London: SCM, 1990], 52; see further 52–62 on Paul’s knowledge of “sayings” of Jesus). See also N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God

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(London: SPCK, 1992), 407–9; Marion L. Soards, “Christology of the Pauline Epistles,” in Who Do You Say That I Am?: Essays on Christology in Honor of Jack Dean Kingsbury (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), 88–109; Udo Schnelle, Apostle Paul: His Life and Theology, trans. M. Eugene Boring (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005 [2003]), 103–18; Richard A. Burridge, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), esp. 81–154. 5. For the date of 1 Corinthians, see, e.g., Archibald Robertson and Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, ICC (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), xxvii-xxxviii; Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans / Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995), 71–73; Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1997), 55; Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians, SP 7 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1999), 23–24, J. Paul Sampley, The First Letter to the Corinthians, NIB (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 10:776–77. 6. See pages 25–26. 7. Interpretations of the Corinthians’ question other than that which I suggest above have been put forward. These include the notion that some of the Corinthians had misunderstood Paul’s teaching about being already raised in baptism with Christ (e.g., C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians [London: A. & C. Black, 1968], 348; Charles H. Talbert, Reading Corinthians: A Literary and Theological Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians [New York: Crossroad, 1987], 98), or that they had misunderstood Paul’s ethical teaching about putting sarx to death (Ramón M. Trevijano Etcheverría, “Los que dicen que no hay resurrección [1 Cor 15,12],” Salmanticensis 33 [1986]: 275–302), or that they had been influenced by a type of Judaism represented by Philo and the Wisdom of Solomon (Richard Horsley, “‘How Can Some of You Say That There Is No Resurrection of the Dead?’ Spiritual Elitism at Corinth” NovT 20 [1978]: 203–31). Yet each of these possibilities involves a somewhat tortuous hypothesis, as (still more) does Conzelmann’s helpless conclusion that “we can hardly manage without the assumption of a certain misunderstanding on Paul’s part” (1 Corinthians, 262)—a conclusion which, even if accepted, would only remove the question by one stage, for we should still be obliged to ask, what is it then that Paul imagines that the Corinthians believe, against which he feels constrained to argue? It remains, in my view, far more likely that the denial to which Paul refers was precisely what it appears to be, as I have described it above; so Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, 346; Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, O.P., 1 Corinthians (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1979), 137; Hays, First Corinthians, 252–53; Witherington, Conflict and Community, 301–303; Collins, First Corinthians, 541; Schnelle, Apostle Paul, 225–26. 8. Some of the Corinthians perhaps took the view that “one’s adherence to the psychic realm can be overcome here and now by the discovery of one’s belongingness to the realm of the spiritual anthropos, [whereas] for Paul the σῶμα ψυχικόν would be laid aside only at the parousia” (Robert Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms: A Study of Their Use in Conflict Settings, AGJU 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 354.

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9. So far, then, I agree with Gerd Lüdemann: “Paul purports to have seen Jesus in his transformed physical body and thereafter asserts that Christians will receive a transformed physical body like the one that the heavenly man Christ has (cf. 1 Cor 15:35–39)” (Jesus’ Resurrection Fact or Figment?: A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann, ed. Paul Copan and Ronald K. Tacelli [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2000], 151). Lüdemann goes on to assure us, however, that all this merely resulted from Paul’s failure to understand the Corinthian position. More precisely, it “derives from Paul’s inability to think of the existence of a person after death in a nonbodily form” (ibid.). In this, I think, Lüdemann is mistaken. On the contrary, I would argue from references elsewhere (see my comments on 2 Cor 5:1–4 in additional note F, “Further Reflections on Paul’s Understanding of Resurrection as involving a Transformed Physicality,” pages 221–29 and n. 14 thereto) that Paul understood perfectly well what the “purely spiritual” eschatology was saying. He regarded it, however, as inadequate and wrong. 10. To discuss Paul’s text in terms of the canons of ancient rhetoric is appropriate since, as Julius Victor was to express it (fourth century), “epistolis conveniunt multi eorum quae de sermone praecepta sunt” [to letters apply many of the precepts pertaining to oral discourse] (The Art of Rhetoric, 27). Since many letters in antiquity—and clearly letters to communities, such as the Corinthian correspondence and Paul’s Letter to the Romans—were designed to be heard, this is hardly surprising. In 1 Corinthians, however, as quite often with discourse that falls more or less into the category that the ancients would have regarded as philosophical, the distinction between epideictic or demonstrative discourse (that is, speech that “has for its subject praise or censure” [Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.3.1358b; cf. To Herennius 3.6.18; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 3.4.12–14]) and deliberative discourse (that is, discourse designed to persuade its hearers to a decision about action in the future) is not always entirely clear. Evidently, Paul intends to persuade the Corinthians to a certain attitude to the world, and in that sense his discourse is epideictic; on the other hand, he does see that attitude as leading to decisions about how to live, and to that extent his rhetoric has elements of the deliberative (e.g., 1 Cor 15:33–34, 58); see further Christopher Bryan, A Preface to Romans: Notes on the Epistle in Its Literary and Cultural Setting (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 21–22, 25–27, and literature there cited; also Witherington, Conflict and Community, 291–92; Collins, First Corinthians, 525–28. 11. Quintillian, though naturally using the Latin word exordium in his discussion, considered the Greek προοίμιον to be more descriptive of the function of this part of an address since “there can be no doubt that by ‘proem’ we mean the portion of a speech addressed to the judge before he has begun to consider the actual case” [certe proemium est, quod apud iudicem dici, priusquam causam cognoverit, possit] (Institutio Oratia 4.1.3). 12. Collins, First Corinthians, 533. 13. Paul’s word γνωρίζω means “to cause information to become known” or else “to have information or be knowledegable” (BDAG, “γνωρίζω,” 1, 2). Pace the translators of the RSV, NAB, NRSV, it does not mean “remind,” and to translate it in

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that way destroys Paul’s gentle but clear irony: he speaks as if giving the Corinthians “new information,” although of course he knows (and they ought to know) that he has already given it to them, as his following series of descriptive clauses (“which . . . in which . . . through which”) makes clear (see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., First Corinthians, AYB 32 [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008], 544). 14. With deliberative oratory, “as regards the statement of facts, this is never required in speech on private subjects, at least as regards the subject on which an opinion has to be given, because everyone is acquainted with the question at issue. Statements as to external matters which are relevant to the discussion may, however, frequently be introduced.” [narrationem vero numquam exigit privata deliberatio, eius dumtaxat rei de qua dicenda sententia est, quia nemo ignorat id de quo consulit. Extrinsecus possunt pertinentia ad deliberationem multa narrari.] (Quintillian, Insitutio Oratoria 3.8.10–11, trans. H. E. Butler). This appears perfectly to describe the role of 1 Cor 15:3–11 in 1 Cor 15 as a whole. 15. I follow Collins, in whose view the expression here translated “as of first importance” (ἐν πρώτοις) “has neither chronological nor logical significance. Rather it points to the kerygma, expressed in the creed, as the focal point of Paul’s gospel” (First Corinthians, 534); contrast Conzelmann, who considers that it may be “best understood as referring to order” (1 Corinthians, 251). 16. “The point is that St. Paul did not invent what he communicated to them; he received just what they received” (Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, 333). On the apparent contradiction between what Paul says here and Gal 1:11–12, the comments of Seyoon Kim are pertinent: “through the revelation of Christ on the Damascus road Paul came to realize the truth of the Christian proclamation that the crucified Jesus is the risen and exalted Lord and the tradition of 1 Cor. 15.3ff. is a formal expression of this essence of the gospel” (The Origin of Paul’s Gospel [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982 (1981)], 69). 17. In the Greek academies and in the mysteries, παραδίδωμι (“hand over” or “deliver”) and παραλαμβάνω (“receive”) are used for the cultivation of a school’s teaching and tradition; in Judaism, l“ rs'm (“deliver to” or “hand on to”) and ˜mi lB´qi (“receive from”) are technical terms to denote the faithful transmission of Torah (e.g., ’Abot 1). Greek and Jewish usages seem to be converging in various strands of Greek-speaking Judaism (e.g., Wis 14:15, Josephus, Against Apion 1.60) and even more clearly in the New Testament at 1 Cor 11:23 and 15:3 (cf. also Mark 7:13; Gal. 1.14). See Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 6; Spicq, Lexicon, 3:16–19; BDAG, “παραδίδωμι,” 3, “παραλαμβάνω,” 2, b, g; M, “παραλαμβάνω” 2; Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2006), 264–65. Koester, however, strangely qualifies his observations by noting that “Paul apparently expanded the cited tradition, and he does not refer to any names in the chain of transmission that would guarantee its trustworthiness” (ibid.). Yet the tradition itself cited Peter and the Twelve—surely as guarantors of its trustworthiness—and Paul himself adds other names of persons with whom he appears to assume his hearers are familiar (see above). I am at a loss to imagine what more of a “chain” there could possibly be in respect of a “tradition” that was itself,

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when Paul wrote, at most about twenty-five years old, and very possibly less. Interestingly, although the apostolic formula at 1 Cor 15 points to its own trustworthiness by referring to Peter and the twelve, when Paul speaks of the Last Supper – that is, of an event “within Jesus’ own ministry – he says that what he has “received” is “from the Lord.” This surely does not imply direct revelation (as Robertson and Plummer said, “why assume a supernatural communication when a natural one was ready at hand?”) but it does claim that the tradition truly started with Christ, and that Paul is “a sure link in the chain which reached from the Lord Himself to them” (Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, 242). “The Lord is not merely the guarantor of the tradition, but its origin” (Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 196n35). 18. That 1 Cor 15:3–8 is a formula taken over from earlier church tradition is generally agreed: see Martin Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel, trans. Bertram Lee Wolf (Cambridge and London: James Clarke, 1971 [1933]), 18–19; Oscar Cullmann, The Earliest Christian Confessions, trans. J. K. S. Reid (London: Lutterworth, 1949), 23; J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (London: Longmans, Green, 1950), 16–17; Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 252–54; Collins, First Corinthians, 531; Hays, First Corinthians, 254–55; N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (London: SPCK / Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 319; Ellen Bradshaw Aitken, Jesus’ Death in Early Christian Memory: The Poetics of the Passion (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2004), 29–30; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 541. Assuming at least some degree of historical reminiscence in the accounts of Paul’s conversion in Acts, it seems natural to suppose he will have received an introduction into the traditions of the community at Damascus (Acts 9:8–22), and so he may well have first learned the formula there (so, e.g., Jean Héring, The First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, trans. A. W. Heathcote and P. J. Allcock [London: Epworth, 1962], 158). On other hand, there is not the slightest reason to suppose thereby the sometimes-postulated separation between a “Hellenistic” Christianity represented by Damascus and a “Palestinian Jewish” Christianity represented by Jerusalem. Not only do proposals of this kind assume a hypothetical “Judaism-Hellenism divide” that, as is increasingly evident, never existed, they also on the issue in question contradict Paul’s own evidence (1 Cor 15:5, 7; Gal 1:18-2.10) (see further Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “Paul Beyond the Judaism / Hellenism Divide,” in Paul Beyond the Judaism / Hellenism Divide, ed. Troels EngbergPedersen [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001], 1–17, and the entire collection, passim). 19. “We may say then that this quotation functions as an authoritative utterance for the community, and as they recognize it as such it establishes their identity and affiliation with one another” (Aitken, Jesus’ Death, 29). 20. “Without a narrative . . . the meaning of the various christological formulae quoted by Paul in the letters would have been quite inaccessible to the first hearers” (Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, trans. John Bowden [London: SCM / Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2000], 147). 21. “Here it is assumed that the burial story was never the conclusion of the pre-Markan passion narrative of the passion of the righteous man Jesus. Such a passion narrative was designed to show God’s rehabilitation of the martyred righteous

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man. In my judgment its original conclusion can only have been Mark 16.1–8, not Mark 15.42–46” (Ulrich Luz, Matthew, trans. James E. Crouch, [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001–7], 3:580). “To set these matters in their connection corresponded to a need, and all the more as only a description of the consequences of the Passion and of Easter resolved the paradox of the Cross” (Dibelius, Tradition to Gospel, 23). 22. Cf. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 254n56; Aitken, Jesus’ Death, 29. That the formula is introduced by hoti (“that”) is not surprising (compare Rom 10:9; 1 Thess 4:14), but the fourfold repetition is grammatically unnecessary and is probably intended as a way of emphasizing each element in turn. As Conzelmann notes, we cannot conclude from the repeated hoti that each introduces “what was originally an independent formula.” 23. Wright is, I think, correct in his claim that in this early formulation the expression “Christ” (χριστός) must carry its full messianic sense and be linked with the messianic texts in 1 Cor 15:20–28 (see Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 319–20). 24. Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, 334; BDF §342.1; Barrett, First Corinthians, 340; Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 256n67; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 726 and n. 64; Collins, First Corinthians, 530; Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 321; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 547. 25. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 256n67; Fee, First Corinthians, 726 and n. 64; Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 321. 26. Barrett, First Corinthians, 338; cf. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 255; Witherington, Conflict and Community, 299; Collins, First Corinthians, 530–31; Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 320. Robertson and Plummer appropriately cited Bengel: “pro peccatis nostris abolendis,” and went on to say, “There is a real connection, beyond our comprehension, between Christ’s death and the forgiveness of sins. This is in agreement with the O.T. (Isa. liii.4–12), and this agreement is part of the εὐαγγέλιον that Paul proclaimed to them” (First Corinthians, 333). 27. The expression τῃ̑ ἡμέρᾳ τῃ̑ τρίτῃ (together with the slightly less emphatic τῃ̑ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ at Matt 16:21 par. Luke 9:22; Matt 17:23; Matt 20:19 par. Luke 18:33; and Luke 24:46) is not easy, and I have followed what appears to be the most straightforward way of interpreting it (compare Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 547–48). Also at issue is the question of its relationship to μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας (used of Jesus’ resurrection in Mark’s version of the passion predictions [Mark 8:31, 9:31, 10:34] and by the priests at Matt 27:63 [see ch. 6 n. 35). Matt and Luke both normally replace it by τῃ̑ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ, which they presumably regard as an equivalent but more graceful expression. 28. On Rom 10:4 in particular, see my discussion in the latter part of n. 4, above. On the more general question of Paul’s understanding of the relationship between his εὐαγγέλιον and the Scriptures, see further Bryan, Preface to Romans, 54, 168, 171–72; Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 320–21; Aitken, Jesus’ Death, 30. 29. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 255n61; Aitken, Jesus’ Death, 31–32.

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30. Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983), 92. 31. On these particular passages, see Aitken, Jesus’ Death, 27–54, 55–87, 130–64. Aitken is particularly helpful in pointing to the place of these retellings of the Passion in terms of Israel’s Scripture within the context of worship. 32. Aitken, Jesus’ Death, 101–29. 33. Collins, First Corinthians, 531. 34. With my views contrast e.g. Conzelmann, who asserts that there is in ἐτάϕη “no allusion to the empty tomb. The intention is rather to emphasize the reality of the death” (1 Corinthians 255). Conzelmann is here, I would argue, right in what he affirms and wrong in what he denies: ἐτάϕη does indeed speak to the reality of Christ’s death, but the apostolic formula places it in a context wherein it must resonate with ἐγήργεται. I would argue that that resonance compels it to say more: compels it, in fact, to speak of the reversal of ἐτάϕη, and thereby compels it to proclaim an empty τάϕος. Hence my understanding of 1 Corinthians 15.3–5 is precisely opposite to that of Gerd Lüdemann, who considers it “not possible (at least it’s difficult) to read the empty tomb into this text” (Jesus’ Resurrection Fact or Figment? 44). On the contrary, I would say that for a sensitive literary-critical reading it’s not possible (at least it’s difficult) to read the empty tomb out of this text. Lüdemann’s further comments on 1 Corinthians 15, concluding with the confident assertion, “That is the way we proceed in biblical scholarship” (45) appear to me to be of little value. Among commentators who do take a view of 1 Cor 15:4 that is similar to mine, see Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians 334; Cullmann, Earliest Christian Confessions 32; C. E. B. Cranfield, Mark 466; Walter Künneth, The Theology of the Resurrection, transl. James W. Leitch (London: SCM Press, 1965) 93; Ulrich Wilckens, “The Tradition-History of the Resurrection of Jesus” in The Significance of the Message of the Resurrection for Faith in Jesus Christ. C. F. D. Moule, ed. (London: SCM, 1968) 57–58; Reginald H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (New York: Macmillan / London: Collier-Macmillan, 1971) 16-20, 48–49; Hays, First Corinthians 256; Fee, First Corinthians 725-26; Martin Hengel, “Das Begräbnis Jesu bei Paulus und die leibliche Auferstehung aus dem Grabe” in Auferstehung— Resurrection, ed. Friedrich Avemarie and Herman Lichtenberger. WUNT 135 (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2001), 120-83; Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God 321; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians 547. Even Marcus Borg concedes the possibility that “the reference to ‘buried’ implicitly points to an empty tomb” (in Borg and Wright, Meaning of Jesus 132); similarly Daniel Smith: “In its original setting, this kerygmatic tradition could have been understood to mean that Jesus was raised by God in such a way that he left the tomb in a renewed physical body” although “this does not mean that all early Christians who used this tradition, Paul included, would have naturally thought along similar lines” (Revisiting the Empty Tomb 32) – in view of 1 Cor 15:12, it appears certain that some did not, though Paul’s intention is evidently to correct them. 35. I was somewhat impressed by this argument at one time—see Bryan, “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” STR 50, no. 2 (2007): 256n24.

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36. No one has presented the connection between Paul’s understanding of the resurrection of Christ and his understanding of the coming general resurrection more clearly and succinctly than R. H. Fuller: see his Formation of the Resurrection Narratives 18–19. 37. But see further on 1 Cor 15:7, page 52. 38. Barrett, First Corinthians, 342, Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 251–52; Hays, First Corinthians, 255, 257; Collins, First Corinthians, 535. Fitzmyer believes that the original formula ended with the reference to Cephas (First Corinthians, 549–50). Wright is non-committal (Resurrection of the Son of God, 319). While I incline to feel surer than does Wright that the apostolic formula ended at v. 5 (or possibly, as Fitzmyer believes, at v. 5a), I certainly agree with him that in any case, “the issue does not affect the basic point to be made, either by Paul, or by ourselves. What counts is that the heart of the formula is something Paul knows the Corinthians will have heard from everyone else as well as himself, and that he can appeal to it as unalterable Christian bedrock” (ibid.). 39. Ten of the sixteen NT occurrences of ἔπειτα are in Paul, and on other occasions he uses the word to tie together a series of three (1 Cor 12:28, Gal 1:18–2:1); see Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 257; Collins, First Corinthians, 535. 40. Suggestions such as that the appearance to the five hundred is another way of describing what happened at Pentecost (Barrett, First Corinthians, 342, Gerd Lüdemann, What Really Happened to Jesus? A Historical Approach to the Resurrection, trans. John Bowden [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995], 100–101, 133) or that it is “Paul’s attempt to sum up the appearances of the Risen One to all believers” (Collins, First Corinthians, 536) are intriguing, but indemonstrable—the latter is, indeed, unlikely since, as Collins himself concedes, “at one time” (ἐϕάπαξ) normally indicates what happens simultaneously or only once (ibid.) Cf. BDAG, “ἐϕάπαξ,” 1, 2. 41. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 258; Talbert, Reading Corinthians, 97; Collins, First Corinthians, 536. 42. In The Gospel of the Hebrews, cited in Jerome, De viris inlustribus 2; in Edgar Hennecke and William Schneemelcher, Gospels and Related Writings, vol. 1 of New Testament Apocrypha (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963), 165. 43. That Paul was prepared to refer to women as “apostle” is evident, for he does so on at least one occasion (Rom 16:7); see further Eldon Jay Epp, Junia: The First Woman Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005). 44. “The last of the witnesses of the risen Christ was Paul himself” (Barrett, First Corinthians, 343). 45. “His own vision is apparently meant as the conclusive end of the appearances of the risen Lord” (Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 259; P. R. Jones, “1 Corinthians 15:8: Paul the Last Apostle,” TynBul 36 [1985]: 3–34). 46. Paul’s emphasis on himself as “‘last’ of those to whom the risen Christ appeared” means that “he puts himself at the bottom of the list, even though he claims to be an ‘apostle’ of equal rank” (Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 552); “the point of comparison does not lie in the timing of the Apostle’s conversion, but in the idea of inferiority and unworthiness” (Héring, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 162; similarly

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Collins, First Corinthians, 537; Maria A. Pascuzzi, First and Second Corinthians [Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2005], 84). 47. I have written elsewhere of the perils of assuming that antique texts—that is, texts composed in a society much closer to orality than we are—had or were intended to have only one meaning; see my Preface to Romans, 71–72; see further, and seminally, Walter J. Ong, S.J., The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981 [1967]), 46–47 and throughout. 48. BDAG, “ἔκτρωμα”; compare LS “ἔκτρωμα.” 49. Collins, First Corinthians, 535. Naturally one would think of Isa 49:1 and Jer 1:5 and of Paul’s explicitly claiming such a prophetic call for himself at Gal 1:15. 50. No one has expressed this view more persuasively than James Moffatt: “With a flash of humble pride, he catches up a scornful taunt flung at him by some . . . ‘An abortion of an apostle, this Paul, with his sudden conversion, so irregular, so violent and abnormal, so long after the others had seen the Lord! This mal-formed soul, to claim the vitality of the real apostles!’ Yes, he admits ironically, ‘it is a miracle that I came to life at all. I am indeed the one example of this in the apostolic circle. But look at what has come of my birth. It may have been an abortion, this life of mine, lifeless before I saw the Lord; but how he has made me live and work! My career since then has not been abortive!’” (The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians [London: Hodder and Stoughton, (1938)], 238–39; so, more or less, Barrett, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 344; Héring, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 162; Witherington, Conflict and Community, 300 [cautiously]). 51. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 552; cf. Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, 339–40. 52. Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, 340; similarly Borg, in Borg and Wright, Meaning of Jesus, 132. 53. Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, 340. 54. Cf. Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, 343; C. H. Dodd, “The Appearances of the Risen Christ: An Essay in Form-Criticism of the Gospels,” in Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot, ed. D. E. Nineham (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), 30; Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 318–19. 55. Here Paul, by the additional phrase, spells out what was implicit if not expressed in the formula as he quoted it earlier, and what was, indeed, a standard part of the early Christian preaching, reflected in every strand of tradition (Acts 3:15; Rom 1:4; Phil 2:6–11; Col 1:18; Eph 1:20; 2 Tim 2:8; Heb 13:20; 1 Pet 1:3; Rev 1:5). 56. Robertson and Plummer’s point also stands, however: “The fact of the Incarnation also involves a difference in kind between the Resurrection of the Son of God and that of his adopted children. The connection between antecedent and consequent is therefore not logical merely, but causal: the Resurrection of Christ is not viewed by the Apostle as one particular case of a general law, but as the source of Divine Power which effects the Resurrection in store for His members (cf. 15:23). Deny the effect, and you overthrow the cause; accept the cause as a fact, and the effect will certainly follow” (First Corinthians, 347–48).

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57. Literally, “false witnesses of God” (ψευδομάρτυρες τοῦ θεοῦ); Paul’s expression is in itself somewhat ambiguous, but the genitive is presumably intended objectively, and what Paul means by it is explained in the clause that follows (Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, 348–49; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 563–64). 58. Firstfruits (ἀπαρχή) is a first portion of any kind and carries with it the implication that there is more to come. Pauline use of ἀπαρχή—and indeed NT use generally—invariably emphasizes this connection so that firstfruits represents the harvest and even, in a sense, contains and guarantees it; see further Spicq, Lexicon, 1:145–52. 59. Evidently, therefore, we must dismiss Conzelmann’s claim that at 1 Cor 15:22, “‘all’ does not mean all men together, but all who are in Christ” (1 Corinthians, 269). Certainly Paul makes a distinction between the privilege of those who “belong to Christ” and the rest of humanity—and that distinction will be presented to us at 1 Cor 15:23–24. But we must take seriously Paul’s story as he tells it, and therefore we must understand his distinction at 15:23–24 in light of what he has just said of the “all” at 15:22, not the other way round. 60. Barrett, First Corinthians, 353. 61. “Group” (τάγμα) refers to any clearly defined class or group, whether military or not. According to the view taken above, with reference to the resurrection Paul distinguishes three groups: first Christ, then Christians (who will receive it at his parousia), and then the rest of humanity, who will receive it when death is finally destroyed (compare BDAG, “τάγμα,” 1, b; see also n. 67 below). 62. Among elements in 15:23–28 that are typical of a traditional Jewish apocalyptic and eschatological scenario, we note Paul’s reference to the divinely appointed order in which these things must come about (1 Cor 15:23a), his understanding that the Christ “must reign” until all evil powers are overcome (must implying the divine providence, 15:25), and the stages in which this is to happen (“thereupon [ἔπειτα] . . . then [εἶτα] . . . when . . . when . . . when . . . then [τότε])” (15:23–24, 28). 63. The same point is made by the author of Colossians (assuming that that is not Paul—of course it may be) in Col 1:17 and by John the Seer in Rev 1:4. 64. It is not necessary to take “the end” (τέλος) as meaning “last in the series,” that is, “the remainder” or “the rest” (as did Hans Lietzmann, An die Korinther I/II, 5th ed., rev. W.G. Kümmel. HNT 9 [Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1969] 80), in order to understand 1 Cor 15:25–26 as referring to the resurrection of the rest of humanity; that reference is built into Paul’s reference to the destruction of death in 15:26 and follows from his general statement about humanity in 15:22. Nevertheless, pace various commentators, BDAG continues to regard the usage suggested by Lietzmann as at least possible; see BDAG, “τέλος,” 4; contrast, however, Gerhard Delling, TDNT 8:56. 65. Paul’s expressions are elliptical and, taken alone, not unambiguous. It seems most likely to me, however, especially in view of the allusion he is about to make to Ps 110, that Paul will have known and simply taken for granted what the psalmist says,

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namely, that it is God who will subdue “all his enemies” to the King; see Hermann Gunkel, The Psalms: A Form-Critical Introduction, trans. Thomas M. Horner (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967 [1930]), 23–24; Artur Weiser, The Psalms, trans. Herbert Hartwell (London: SCM, 1962 [1959, 5th ed.]), 694; Mitchell Dahood, S.J., Psalms 101–150, AB 17a (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 112–14; for rabbinic association of Ps 110 with the King-Messiah, see Avrohom Chaim Feuer with Nosson Scherman,