I used to wonder about the Resurrection. What
really happened and how could we know? I knew that there were two strands of
evidence: empty tomb and appearances. Then I read an article which pointed out
that the strands were independent in the earliest literature. (1) Paul mentions
only appearances. Mark's Gospel, as originally written, mentions only the tomb.
Thus, only the later Evangelists mention both and they received the tomb story
only from Mark, not from founders or eye witnesses.
Remembering that Peter's Pentecost Sermon is
regarded as an early source, I re-read the Sermon in order to confirm that it
mentions only appearances. Instead, I found that it mainly mentions scriptural
interpretations. For the first time, I asked: did the disciples infer the
Resurrection from scripture? Re-reading Luke's Gospel confirmed this.
First a
stranger en route to Emmaus, then the risen Jesus, interpreted scripture. I take
the latter to mean that the disciples, inspired by memories of Jesus and by the
words of the stranger whom they identified with him, re-interpreted scripture
and that Luke later described the meeting in which the disciples formulated
their new interpretation as a physical conversation between them and the risen
Jesus. I think that this hypothesis adequately addresses the question of what
could have happened.
The accounts remain mysterious and evocative.
The Jesus who has gone before you to Galilee is a powerful myth like Gautama
seeking the way to the end of suffering or Krishna teaching karma yoga on the
battlefield of Kurukshetra, except that those guys could have done those things
whereas I do not think that Jesus was still around after he had died.
1. John M. G. Barclay, "The Resurrection in
Contemporary New Testament Scholarship", Chapter 1 of Gavin D'Costa (Ed.),
Resurrection Reconsidered, Oxford, England, 1996, pp. 13-30.
No comments:
Post a Comment