Resurrection Accounts

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Unit C

Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?

Witnesses, Dates, and Accounts

Habermas’ Survey of Contemporary Exegetes on the Resurrection

Gary R. Habermas has completed an extensive survey of contemporary exegetes on this matter, and has made several interesting discoveries:

[1] The latest research on Jesus’ resurrection appearances reveals several extraordinary developments. As firmly as ever, most contemporary scholars agree that, after Jesus’ death, his early followers had experiences that they at least believed were appearances of their risen Lord. Further, this conviction was the chief motivation behind the early proclamation of the Christian gospel. These basics are rarely questioned, even by more radical scholars. They are among the most widely established details from the entire New Testament.^[1]

[2] Perhaps surprisingly, more skeptical scholars often still acknowledge the grounds for the appearances as well. … Helmut Koester [notes]: “We are on much firmer ground with respect to the appearances of the risen Jesus and their effect…. That Jesus also appeared to others (Peter, Mary Magdalene, James) cannot very well be questioned.” ^[2]

In view of this general agreement about the historicity of the resurrection appearances, where do opinions diverge? Habermas again notes, “the crux of the issue, then, is not whether there were real experiences, but how we explain the nature of these early experiences.”

Habermas then proceeds to inquire into what these exegetes consider to be the cause of the apostolic Church’s early and widespread belief that Jesus rose from the dead. Was it a natural cause or a supernatural cause? Surprisingly, the vast majority of exegetes believe that the cause was supernatural. Nevertheless, Habermas examines the minority opinion, namely, natural causation. His investigation ranges from the subjective vision theory of Gerd Lüdemann (who grounds his hypothesis in “stimulus,” “religious intoxication,” and “enthusiasm” ), to the illumination theory of Willi Marxsen (who asserts that Peter had an internal experience which led him to convince the other apostles about Jesus’ resurrection). These theories do not stand up to serious historical and exegetical scrutiny. Indeed, most of them fail when subjected to quite superficial applications of historical and exegetical criteria, and so Habermas concludes, “In the twentieth century, critical scholarship has largely rejected wholesale the naturalistic approaches to the resurrection.”

He then proceeds to an examination of supernatural causes for the early witnesses’ experience of the risen Jesus. “Supernatural causation” means that something happened to Jesus rather than to His followers. What happened to Jesus must be supernatural because it effects a transition from death to new life. Variations among “supernatural causation” explanations are centered on the ways in which the risen Jesus appeared – that is, the ways in which His risen life was mediated in the physical world (in history) so that it could be collectively experienced by His followers. There are two major hypotheses in this regard: (1) a luminous appearance and (2) a transformed corporeal appearance.

The luminous explanation holds that Jesus appeared as light (divine glory) to individuals and groups of disciples. This luminous appearance would have been mediated in the physical world and could have been shared by several witnesses at once. Though it is not a “subjective” appearance, it accents the transformation of Jesus’ risen life to the virtual total exclusion of continuity with His previous human embodiment. The luminous explanation is derived mostly from the accounts of Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus in Acts. Its two most famous proponents are Joachim Jeremias and Reginald Fuller. Jeremias notes in this regard:

…[T]he appearance of Christ to Paul which is mentioned last in I Cor. 15.3ff., and which consisted in a vision of shining light (II Cor. 4.6; Acts 9.3; 22.6; 26.13), clearly attests the pneumatic character of the Christophanies (cf. I Cor. 15.44…); it may be regarded as typical of all of them.

Fuller agrees with Jeremias and concludes:

From this we would suggest, very tentatively, that the form which the self-disclosure of the Risen One took for Paul (and therefore presumably, also for the recipients of appearances prior to him) was the form of a vision of light. ¶ In alluding to his apostolic call in Galatians 1:16, Paul seems to imply that it was not simply a visual experience of some sort, but that it also involved a communication of meaning: God revealed his Son (i.e., Jesus in his eschatological [heavenly and glorified]-christological significance) to Paul.

As noted above, this explanation is not merely subjective; it is mediated through the physical world, and as such, can be sensorially experienced by many witnesses at once. Nevertheless, it puts an almost total accent on Jesus’ transformed (glorious) appearance and eclipses the corporeal qualities or human characteristics which were very likely part of his appearance (see below, Section II).

Though these theories enjoyed considerable popularity in the exegetical community between 1956 to the 1980s, they began to wane after that time because they tended to give too little credence to the Gospel accounts of post-resurrection embodiment and even to Saint Paul’s references to “spiritual body” (pneumatikon sōma). After the publication of N.T. Wright’s extraordinarily comprehensive work, The Resurrection of the Son of God, this hypothesis was overshadowed by the “transformed corporeal” explanation of Jesus’ resurrection. According to Habermas, the luminous explanation is held by only 19% of the contemporary exegetical community, while the “transformed corporeal” explanation is held by 56% of that same community.

As will be shown below, the resurrection appearances of Jesus have both a transformational (spiritual) character as well as a corporeal character. Since the luminous explanation puts so much emphasis on light (glory), it is less complete than “transformed corporeal” explanations, which leave room for combinations of exaltation (transmaterial or spiritual) characteristics with corporeal (human) characteristics. These explanations may be classified according to three kinds: (1) an appearance which begins with corporeal characteristics and moves to spiritual/glorious characteristics, (2) an appearance which begins with emphasis on spiritual/glorious characteristics and then moves toward corporeal characteristics, and (3) appearances which combine both spiritual/glorious and corporeal characteristics at once (like a super-transfiguration of Jesus, in which there is a clear corporeal feature animated by light and brilliance).

N.T. Wright’s work reveals that the departure of the Christian notions of resurrection, kingdom, messiahship, and worldview, from their roots in Second-temple Judaism, virtually requires an early Christian experience of corporeal (as well as transformed) resurrection (see Unit II-D). When this is combined with the early accounts of the empty tomb, it lends great weight to the evidence for a transformed-corporeal resurrection of Jesus.

Thus, the transformed-corporeal theory comprehensively explains: (1) the full range of resurrection accounts in the Gospels including the empty tomb, the appearance to the women, and the appearance to the disciples, (2) the accounts of Saint Paul with their spiritual and corporeal elements, and (3) the many departures of early Christianity from its roots in Second-temple Judaism. There can be no doubt that it has the widest and deepest explanatory power of any theory of the risen appearances yet conceived, which is why it enjoys such great popularity among contemporary scholars (over 56%).

The remainder of this Unit and the next will be devoted to justifying this claim and presenting N.T. Wright’s comprehensive analysis of the evidence for Jesus’ transformed-corporeal resurrection. This will be done in six sections:

(1) Jesus’ risen appearance in Saint Paul (see page contents below, Section 1);

(2) Witnesses, dates, and Gospel accounts of Jesus’ risen appearance (see page contents below, Section 2);

(3) Wright’s argument for the historicity of the resurrection from the unique development of the Christian Church (see Encyclopedia Unit L)

(4) Wright’s argument for the historicity of the resurrection from the uniquely Christian conception of “resurrection” (see Encyclopedia Unit L, Section II);

(5) Wright’s argument for the historicity of the resurrection from the uniquely Christian conception of “messiahship” and “kingdom,” (see Encyclopedia Unit L, Section III);

(6) Jesus’ resurrection and the revelation of His divinity (see Encyclopedia Unit L, Section IV).

Evidence of the Historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection in Saint Paul

The historical assessment of Paul’s testimony to the risen appearance of Jesus will be taken up in four subsections:

A) The 1Corinthians 15 kerygma,

B) Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus,

C) Paul’s validation of his claim to have experienced the risen Jesus, and

D) Wright’s argument for the historicity of Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus.

The 1Corinthians 15 Kerygma

The kerygmas represent the earliest extant proclamations of the primitive Church (AD late 30s and 40s? ). They are brief texts that resemble very simple creedal statements, and are to be found mostly in the Pauline letters, and the Acts of the Apostles (particularly in the speeches of Peter and Paul). These texts predate the Pauline letters and the Acts of the Apostles in which they are contained. They are identifiable through form critical methods, which were elucidated by C.H. Dodd and his predecessors.

Of the ten kerygmas Dodd has identified, nine have explicit reference to Jesus’ resurrection: Acts 2:14-39, Acts 3:13-26, Acts 4:10-12, Acts 5:30-32, Acts 10:36-43, Acts 13:17-41, 1Thess 1:10, 1Cor 15:1-7, Rom 8:34. The only kerygma that does not make explicit reference to the resurrection is one that Dodd has pieced together from two sections of Galatians (Gal 3:1 followed by Gal 1:3-4). Given the solidity of Dodd’s analysis, the resurrection of Jesus is unquestionably central to the earliest strands of apostolic preaching.

The most famous kerygma concerned with the resurrection is the one found in 1Corinthians 15. Here, Paul says he is repeating a tradition which he himself received (showing that it predates the writing of 1Corinthians). It has an obvious formulaic character, relates the resurrection to the death and burial, and gives a list of witnesses to these appearances. This primitive formula contains some additions by Paul (indicated below by square brackets). The kerygma may be translated as follows:

[For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received], that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time [most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.] Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. [Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.] (1Cor. 15:3-8)

Raymond Brown concurs with others that, even though Paul arrived in Corinth in 50, and wrote his famous letter in 56, this kerygma probably originated in the mid-30s. The reason is threefold. First, this passage contains the various factors of an early kerygmatic formula. Secondly, Paul uses the technical words for “transmit” (paralambanō) and “receive” (paradidōmi), which indicate that he is handing on a tradition he likely received at the time of his conversion (the mid-30s). Thirdly, Joachim Jeremias and later, Reginald Fuller (with modifications) have argued for an Aramaic (older, mostly Palestinian) origin of this kerygma. Fuller sums up the evidence as follows:

The safest conclusion for the moment seems to be that the tradition as Paul received it was originally Palestinian, but that it has subsequently passed through a Hellenistic Jewish milieu, and that it was this Hellenized form that Paul received. Although Hellenized, the content of the formula is certainly Palestinian in origin. It was in that milieu that the title “Christos” was first associated with the passion. It was there, too, that the atoning interpretation of Christ’s death was first developed (Mark 10:45; 14:24). It was there that the statement about Christ’s burial is most likely to have originated. It was there apparently that the resurrection of the Christ was first proclaimed. It was there that the apologetic which asserted that Christ’s death took place in fulfillment of scripture originated, and it was with Palestine – specifically with Jerusalem – that Cephas, the Twelve, and James were associated.

Two parts of the kerygma are obviously Pauline additions (see the passages above which are indented and in square brackets). Evidently, the passage beginning with (“Last of all…he appeared also to me”) is Pauline in origin, for Paul does not need to refer to a tradition about himself. The first passage (“most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep”) is also Pauline in origin. This passage merits special attention, not only because it is a Pauline addition, but because of its value in ascertaining the historicity of the events portrayed in the kerygma. By phrasing the passage in this way, Paul is virtually inviting his Corinthian audience to “check out the facts” with the living witnesses. The fact that Paul is writing within living memory of these extraordinary events, and seems to be acquainted with many of the witnesses he lists, that he is aware that these witnesses are still alive, and challenges the Corinthians to investigate them, gives considerable evidential weight to the claims in the passage.

Who are the Witnesses in the 1Corinthians 15 Kerygma?

There are many interpretations of this list. Some exegetes believe that the list could be chronological, as Paul seems to suggest with his use of “first,” “next,” and “last of all…He appeared to me.” Others have suggested that the first part of the list establishes Church governance, while the second part of the list establishes the missionary Church. It is not inconceivable that all three interpretations could be true, such that Jesus could have established Church governance and a missionary Church through the precise chronology elucidated by the kerygma.

The first appearance to Peter and to the Twelve appear to be linked and probably occurred in Galilee. Fuller notes in this regard:

…[T]he appearances to Cephas and to the Twelve form a closely linked group. A single ōphthē (“he appeared”) functions for both appearances, and the particle eita (“then”), used in verses 5-7 to join two items within a single group, connects these two appearances. … ¶ Even if we assume that the disciples remained hidden in Jerusalem until after the Sabbath, as Mark seems to suppose, yet according to the earliest available tradition (Mark) it was in Galilee that the first appearances took place. … ¶ We may conjecture that upon arriving back in Galilee, Peter proceeded to assemble the disciples for the second appearance. Luke contains a hint that this was the procedure: “When you [singular] have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:32).

The third appearance (to the 500+) probably took place after the Twelve returned to Jerusalem and gathered the community together. Fuller believes that this Jerusalem appearance may have been the point at which the risen Jesus bestowed the Holy Spirit upon the large crowd gathered there. Jeremias adds to this contention by noting:

Paul’s remark in I Cor. 15.6 that of the five hundred “most are still alive, but some have fallen asleep,” which is meant to underline the reliability of the account, also contains an indirect reference to the place of the appearance. That it is possible to ascertain which of the eye-witnesses to this appearance are still alive a quarter of a century later makes one wonder whether at least the majority of the five hundred lived in one and the same place, and that would apply to Jerusalem. Since the days of the Tübingen school, therefore, the hypothesis that the appearance to the five hundred and Pentecost are two different traditions of one and the same event has found many supporters. A further point in favour of this combination is that in John 20.22 we find Christophany and the receiving of the spirit linked together.

Some exegetes stress caution with this thesis, because the appearance to the 500 is clearly a Christophany, while the gift of the Holy Spirit in Acts is a charismatic activity, including speaking in tongues. But there is no evidence from Scripture to preclude both of these from being combined (i.e., the risen Christ giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples at Jerusalem). Even if one separates the gift of the Holy Spirit from the appearance to the 500+, the remainder of Fuller’s thesis could still be true, namely, that “the +500 are the first-fruits of the church-founding function of Peter and the Twelve after their return from Galilee to Jerusalem.”

The fourth appearance to James would seem to be (like Paul’s) a post-Pentecost event. Fuller notes that this “James” would almost certainly have to be James the brother (the relative/follower) of Jesus, for James the Less is too insignificant, and James the Greater is martyred very early on. The appearance to this James would explain why he experienced such a rapid rise in the post-Pentecost Church when he does not appear to be even a significant disciple of Jesus during the ministry. Fuller goes so far as to say:

It might be said that if there were no record of an appearance to James the Lord’s brother in the New Testament we should have to invent one in order to account for his post-resurrection conversion and rapid advance.

There is ample evidence in the Acts of the Apostles to show that James serves a double role – he is at once the head of the Jerusalem Church, and also appears to be head of all missionary activities stemming from Jerusalem. If this is the case, then the post-Pentecost appearance to James both establishes Church governance and initiates the mission function of the Church.

The fifth appearance to “all the apostles” refers to “apostles” in another sense than “the Twelve.” Paul commonly uses the term apostolos in a way similar to its common usage (“sent forth” or “those sent forth”) – that is, “missionaries.” This meaning would certainly correspond to the theory that the second set of appearances (James, “all the apostles,” and Paul) in the 1Corinthians 15 kerygma are “mission-initiating.”

If “all the apostles” is meant in this missionary sense, then it refers to all the primary missionaries mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. This would include both Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians and Hellenistic Jewish Christians in the early Church (i.e., prior to the conversion of Paul). Fuller conjectures further:

Were these perhaps the missionaries referred to in Acts 11:19, who embarked upon a mission to Hellenistic Jews in Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch? Were the seven of Acts 6 originally part of the group consisting of “all the apostles?”

Whether or not they were, “all the apostles” seems to refer to a significant group of Aramaic-speaking and Hellenistic missionaries who enjoyed prominence in the pre-Pauline Church.

It seems that these missionaries may have received multiple appearances in a post-Pentecost setting in Jerusalem. Why multiple? Because there is no specific reference to “all at once” as is noted in the passage about the 500+. It would seem, though, that these multiple appearances were shared in groups because specific individuals are not named (as they are for Peter, James, and Paul). Furthermore, Jerusalem is a likely place for these appearances, because it follows upon the Church-founding and mission-initiating activities which had already occurred there. The final appearance to Paul will be taken up below.

If the above conjectures are correct, then the 1Corinthians 15 kerygma refers to: (1) an appearance to Peter and (2) a subsequent appearance to the Twelve (both of which probably took place in Galilee and were both Church-founding and governance-establishing), (3) an appearance to 500 brethren, which may well be a Christophany associated with the gift of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem (which is both Church-founding and mission-establishing), (4) a post-Pentecost appearance to James, the “brother” of Christ, in Jerusalem (which was both governance-establishing and mission-initiating, given that James is both the head of the Jerusalem Church and the head of the mission activities originating in Jerusalem), and (5) multiple post-Pentecost appearances, probably in Jerusalem, to the primary Aramaic-speaking and Hellenistic missionaries in the early Church (prior to the conversion of Paul). Most of the witnesses (from the above five groupings) would have lived within Paul’s writing of the 1Corinthians 15 kerygma (as Paul, himself, notes). The above list of witnesses is probably incomplete, for it does not account for the appearances to the women, or seemingly to minor disciples (such as those on the way to Emmaus).

The Meaning of Ōphthē in the 1Corinthians 15 Kerygma

What does ōphthē in the 1Corinthians 15 list of witnesses mean? It can have meanings ranging from the simple passive “was seen” (in the sense of being seen with the eyes – physical sight – which puts the emphasis on the seer) to “appeared” (“made manifest” or “made accessible to sight,” which puts the emphasis on the reality being seen).

In light of Habermas’ analysis (see the introduction to this Unit above), it is probably best to translate ōphthē through a set of boundary conditions. There is ample evidence to show that from the kerygmas, the writings of Paul, and the resurrection narratives, Jesus was not simply a resuscitated corpse. Though He had corporeal features which resembled His embodied condition during His ministry, He was also transformed, manifesting trans-corporeal (spiritual) qualities which were apparently not conditioned by the laws of physics. Thus, the translation of ōphthē cannot mean “physical sight seeing a merely physical reality.” However, it could mean “physical sight seeing a transformed corporeal reality.”

Why attribute the experience to physical sight? Because the risen Jesus was experienced by groups of disciples – that is, by multiple individuals sharing the same experience. How else could multiple individuals have shared the same experience? The only alternative would seem to be that 500 individuals had their own private “ray of experience” of Jesus, which takes Cartesianism’s intrasubjective prioritization to such an extreme that it completely violates the principle of Ockham’s razor (the simpler explanation is preferable to the convoluted). Instead of one appearance shared by many, we now have poor Jesus having to appear 500 times to 500 individuals, and having to coordinate His 500 distinct appearances to those individuals in some simultaneous fashion! Why would anyone go to such an extent to deny that Jesus was experienced through physical sight?

Therefore, it might be safe to consider ōphthē as referring to “the physical sight of a trans-physical reality which is accessible to physical sight without being limited to the laws of physics.” This not only corresponds to the above boundary conditions, but also respects both meanings of “ōphthē” as passive (“was seen by”) and middle (“appeared”).

Paul’s Experience of the Risen Jesus

There are two main sources of Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus: (1) the texts from his letters, and (2) the texts from the Acts of the Apostles. Paul’s own accounts of seeing the risen Christ must take precedence over Luke’s accounts of the same event, because Luke received his data from Paul. Furthermore, Luke would not have wanted to be in the position of telling Paul what Paul “really” experienced.

Paul’s Experience of the Risen Jesus – Implications in his Writings

There are five passages in Paul’s writings which refer to his experience of the risen Jesus: Galatians 1:11-17, 1Corinthians 9:1, 1Corinthians 15:8-11, 2Corinthians 4:6, and 2Corinthians 12:1-4. Wright assesses the common elements in these five passages, and concludes that Paul had an experience of the risen Christ which was similar to the ones described in the Gospel narratives, namely, that the experience occurred through physical sight, that it had a transformed corporeal ground, and it was not an interior vision or an ecstatic experience. A brief summary of Wright’s conclusions in this regard follows.

(1) Paul physically saw the risen Jesus. At first glance, this might seem to be a very implausible claim because Luke implies that Paul had a vision of Jesus which other witnesses around him did not see. This would seem to indicate that Paul had an interior vision of Jesus (which stands in contrast to the light which all the witnesses saw). However, if we are to value Paul’s own words above the narrative constructions in Luke (which Wright correctly insists must be our hermeneutical priority) and we are not to read the Lukan narrative into Paul’s own vocabulary, and if we are to read Paul’s vocabulary according to its normal meaning, then it would seem that Paul physically saw Jesus. According to Wright:

The combination of this verse [1Corinthians 9:1] with 15:8-11 makes it clear that Paul intends a “seeing” which is something quite different from the manifold spiritual experiences, the “seeings” with the eye of the heart, which many Christians in most periods of history have experienced. … The word heoraka, “I have seen,” is a normal word for ordinary sight. It does not imply that this was a subjective “vision” or a private revelation….

(2) Paul’s experience was not of a non-corporeal being. We should begin with the text of 1Corinthians 15:36-49, because there is excellent reason for believing that Paul grounds his description of our future risen bodies in his experience of the risen Christ. He implies this when he says, “Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one [the risen Christ]” (15:49). If Paul had not experienced the heavenly man (Christ), he would not have been able to give a description of our future risen bodies (the image of the heavenly man). Thus, the forthcoming passage could be read not only as a description of our future risen bodies, but also as Paul’s experience of the risen Christ:

What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel of wheat, perhaps, or of some other kind; but God gives it a body as He chooses, and to each of the seeds its own body. … So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible. It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body (pneumatikon sōma). If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one. … Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, in an instant, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. … For that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality (1Cor.15:36-53).

The key feature throughout Paul’s description is continuity between our natural body and our future spiritual body. Though it is clear that our natural bodies will be significantly transformed, it is equally clear that there will be continuity between the natural body and the spiritual body. This can be seen not only from Paul’s use of the word “sōma” of both the natural and spiritual body, but also his wording in the above passage. The natural body is a “kernel” or a “seed” of what is to come; it is “sown” and “raised” – it is not destroyed and recreated; the natural body “clothes itself” in incorruptibility and immortality – the word “itself” implies that it does not go away. One would have to do violence to this text to remove the dimension of continuity between natural and spiritual body.

We may now return to our original point that Paul grounds his description of our future risen bodies in his experience of the risen Christ. It would seem that Paul’s experience of the risen Christ was certainly not purely spiritual/glorious. His use of “body” and the continuity between “natural body” and “spiritual body” imply that the risen Jesus manifested Himself in a transformed corporeal form. Wright notes in this regard:

…the rest of chapter 15 [of 1Corinthians] does not (as we have seen) speak of that interesting oxymoron, a non-bodily “resurrection.”

(3) Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus is distinct from the ecstatic experiences he later had and described in 2Corinthians 12:1-4. The revelation (or vision) referred to in 2Corinthians 12:1-4 must be different in nature than Paul’s experience of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, because the latter was thought by him to be unrepeatable. Furthermore, the ecstatic experiences are not present to his physical sight (eiden and heoraka) in the world; they are a revelation which snatches him up to the third heaven or paradise. Wright notes in this regard:

The particular ecstatic experience to which he refers in [2Cor] 12.1-4 took place, it seems, around the year 40 (assuming a date in the mid-50s for 2 Corinthians)…. It seems clear from later in the passage that Paul is talking about himself.… [T]his cannot be a reference to his Damascus Road experience; it is chronologically far too late, and belongs in a different category.

Wright goes on to say that Paul does not intend to associate these later ecstatic experiences with the earlier experience of the risen Christ on the road. Indeed, the Corinthian community does not expect him to. They are already familiar with Paul’s “road to Damascus” experience, and are looking for more contemporary experiences:

What they [the Corinthians] want is an up-to-date account of his wonderful spiritual experiences, the more recent the better. If Paul is a true apostle, surely he will be able to regale them with splendid tales of heavenly journeys, of revelations of secret wisdom, of glimpses of glory far beyond mortal eyes.

As Wright notes, the above three characteristics present a considerably different portrait of Paul’s experience of the risen Christ than the one given by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles. If one reads between the lines, it seems that Paul had an experience of a significantly transformed yet corporeal Jesus which he saw with his physical sight, and which was quite distinct from an interior vision. This would make Paul’s experiences very similar to the ones recounted in the Gospel narratives (which accentuate the corporeal elements), but distinct from the accounts given in Acts (which accentuates an appearance as an intense light). How, then, should we interpret the three accounts in Acts?

Paul’s Experience of the Risen Jesus as Described in the Acts of the Apostles

Before proceeding to the three Lukan accounts of Paul’s experience in the Acts of the Apostles, we will want to follow Wright in investigating the other minor or passing references to Paul’s experience in the same work. Wright notes here that these passing references indicate precisely what Paul says in 1Corinthians 9:1, namely, that he physically saw the risen Jesus:

This point is…clear from Acts 9:17, where Ananias speaks of Jesus having “appeared (ophtheis) to you,” and 9.27, where Barnabas explains how Saul had seen (eiden) the lord on the road.

This reinforces the view that Paul actually saw the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.

At first glance, this does not seem to square with the three Lukan accounts of Paul’s experience in Acts, because they imply that Paul had an interior vision of the risen Jesus in that he saw the risen Jesus while his companions did not. If Jesus was accessible to physical sight, it would seem that his companions would have seen Him as well as Paul.

Moreover, the Lukan accounts do not agree among themselves. The first Lukan account (Acts 9:3ff) indicates that his companions did not see anybody, but they heard a voice. The second and third Lukan accounts indicate that his companions saw a light, but did not hear anything. Luke must have been aware of these inconsistencies among the accounts, and was certainly intelligent enough to have reconciled them, which provokes the question of why he would have deliberately written these inconsistent accounts of Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus.

Wright believes that this can be explained by Luke’s interest in legitimating Paul’s call within the longstanding Jewish prophetic tradition. Luke has deliberately created a narrative which follows the calls of Ezekiel and Daniel (two of the greatest prophets in the history of Israel). By putting Jesus’ call of Paul into the same form as God’s call of the great prophets, Luke shows that Jesus is acting in the same way as the God of Israel, and Paul is receiving a call similar to the great prophets. Paul is legitimated to Jewish audiences despite his seemingly rebellious character.

In the call of Ezekiel, no companions are mentioned, however, the mention of light, falling down, a divine voice, and being urged to rise resemble Luke’s account of Paul’s call by Jesus:

Like the bow which appears in the clouds on a rainy day was the splendor that surrounded him. Such was the vision of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I hade seen it, I fell upon my face and heard a voice that said to me: Son of man, stand up! (Ez 1:28-2:1).

In the call of Daniel we see many similarities to the call of Paul in Acts: a vision which Daniel’s companions did not see, a divine voice, falling down, being urged to rise, and a loss of strength:

I looked up and saw a man clothed in linen, with a belt of gold from Uphaz around his waist…. I Daniel, alone saw the vision; the people who were with me did not see the vision, though a great trembling fell upon them, and they fled and hid themselves. So I was left alone to see this great vision. My strength left me, and my complexion grew deathly pale, and I retained no strength. Then I heard the sound of his words; and when I heard the sound of his words, I fell into a trance, face to the ground. But then a hand touched me and roused me to my hands and knees. He said to me, “Daniel, greatly beloved, pay attention to the words that I am going to speak to you. Stand on your feet, for I have now been sent to you.” So while he was speaking this word to me, I stood up trembling (Daniel 10:5-11).

It is difficult to resist Wright’s contention that Luke intentionally contoured the narrative of Paul’s call by Jesus to resemble that of the call of Ezekiel and Daniel by the God of Israel, because it explains why Luke would deviate from the Pauline testimony with which he was familiar (as evidenced in Acts 9:17 and 9:27). Luke wanted to show that Paul was operating within the scope of Jewish tradition, and therefore possessed the authority of Israel’s God. He also wanted to show that the call of Jesus was virtually identical to the call of Israel’s God.

So, where does this leave us in our investigation of how Jesus appeared to Paul? We must return to Paul’s own accounts which indicate that Paul physically saw the risen Jesus as both embodied and transformed. “Body” is implied to be continuous with Jesus’ embodiment during His ministry; and “spiritual” refers to a transformation (re-clothing) of that earthly body into immortality, incorruptibility, power, and glory. Paul seems to have seen a risen Jesus at once glorified and embodied, which closely resembles the accounts given in the Gospel narratives.

Does this mean that we have to discount completely the light and the voice described by Luke (that is, to relegate them to mere literary license)? I would suggest that such a leap goes much too far, because light is consistent with the spiritual transformation of Jesus’ body, and that the voice which Paul hears is consistent with His previous corporeality. One should not infer from this that Jesus appeared as pure light, because this is not consistent with Paul’s account of a re-clothing of Jesus’ physical body. Light may have accompanied the transformed body of Jesus, without, as it were, “taking it over.” Whatever we conclude, it should be consistent with two well-established evidential grounds: (1) Jesus’ appearance as “physically seen” (not an interior vision, but rather accessible to multiple witnesses through exterior physical sight simultaneously), and (2) Jesus’ appearance having characteristics of both spiritual transformation and earthly corporeality. As will be shown below, the Gospel accounts are quite consistent with this Pauline description, explaining why the vast majority of contemporary exegetes subscribe to it.

Paul’s Validation of his and other Witnesses’ Claims about Seeing the Risen Jesus

Immediately after the 1Corinthians 15 kerygma (with its list of witnesses), Paul presents an interesting dilemma which could apply to all the witnesses in that list:

[1] …if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are also found to be false witnesses [pseudomartures] of God because we witnessed [emarturēsamen] of God that He raised Christ….

[2] If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied. …Why am I in peril every hour? …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” (1Cor 15:14-32).

If one looks at this passage carefully, one can see the makings of a classical dilemma which has the objective of verifying the witness value not only of Paul, but also of the Twelve, the 500, James, and the “other apostles.” From a legal perspective, the most objective way of validating a witness’ testimony is to show that that witness has “everything to lose, and nothing to gain.” From the opposite perspective, a witness who has everything to gain and nothing to lose may be telling the truth, but there is no extrinsic way of validating this. Indeed, there is a haunting suspicion that the witness may be acting in his own self-interest. A better witness would be one who had nothing to gain or lose, for at least he would not be acting in his own self-interest. But the best witness would be one who had everything to lose (and nothing to gain) because this witness would be acting against his own self-interest, which is a disposition which most of us want desperately to avoid. I believe that Paul is trying to show that not only he, but also the others in the list of witnesses, are in this third category, and therefore deserve to be ranked among the best possible witnesses.

Paul sets out his test for witness validity in a dilemma with (of course) two opposed parts: (1) the assumption that the witnesses believed in God, and (2) the assumption that the witnesses did not believe in God. Let us return to the passage above, and insert these phrases:

1) [If, on the one hand, we believe in God, and] if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are also found to be false witnesses [pseudomartures] of God because we witnessed [emarturēsamen] of God that He raised Christ….

2) [If on the other hand, we do not believe in God, and] if for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are, of all men, most to be pitied. …Why am I in peril every hour? …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.”

The first part of the dilemma assumes that Paul (and the other witnesses) believe in God. If Paul truly believes in God, He does not want to bear false witness of God, because this would not only disappoint the Lord whom He adores, but also might, in fact, jeopardize his salvation. This problem is compounded by the fact that his false testimony would be leading hundreds, if not thousands of people astray, which would not only be a colossal waste of his ministry and time (“our preaching is in vain”), but also a colossal waste of the time and lives of the people he is affecting by his false testimony (“your faith is in vain”). If Paul really does believe in God, why would he waste his life, waste the faith of believers, bear false witness, and risk his salvation? This does not seem to be commensurate with someone of genuine faith (or common sense).

The second part of the dilemma hypothesizes that Paul does not believe in God. In other words, that Paul’s preaching of the resurrection is not for the sake of converts to God, but for converts to Paul. But Paul presents a poignant objection: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” Paul is saying that the cost of preaching a false resurrection (without any belief in a God who saves) is simply too high. He and the other witnesses are not only being challenged by Jewish and Roman authorities, they are being actively persecuted. As he puts it, he is dying every day and is being subject to trials with substantial risk of martyrdom.

Paul is probably using this dilemma to show (in a quasi-legal fashion) that he and the other witnesses have everything to lose and nothing to gain by bearing false witness to the resurrection of Christ. But this cannot be viewed merely as a test of witness validity. It must also be viewed as a real, internal tribulation that would have occurred to any false witness who either did or did not believe in God under conditions of persecution. In short, it can hardly be believed that such a thought process would not have occurred to a person being persecuted for testimony which he or she knew to be false. Could all of the so-called witnesses within living memory of Christ’s resurrection have been so naïve? It seems to me that they could not. If authentic motivation fails, self-interest seems to occur to us, and the above dilemma makes clear that the witness’ self-interest could not be furthered (in conditions of persecution) if their testimony to Christ’s resurrection were untrue.

It must be stressed that Paul makes the above “contra-self-interest” argument to state clearly why he and the other witnesses would not testify falsely. It does not express the full range of Paul’s positive motivation for enduring persecution through the preaching of the resurrection. Paul not only believes that he is speaking the truth, but that he is speaking the truth about the Lord he loves (that is, the Lord who has loved him first). He endures persecution not simply because he believes he has a duty to bear witness to the truth about the resurrection, but also because he loves the One about whom he bears witness. If Paul’s love is true, then it can hardly be thought that he is preaching a falsity about his Beloved. Paul’s sense of authenticity would probably not permit him to live with such a contradiction. As one probes the depths of Paul’s authenticity, integrity, and love, it is very hard to believe that he (and others like him) could deliberately falsify their claim about the resurrection.

Wright’s Argument for the Historicity of Paul’s Experience of the Risen Jesus

Wright demonstrates, in considerable detail, that the early Christian view of resurrection does not resemble the pagan notion of the “afterlife.” Indeed, the pagan notion of afterlife (disembodied immortality) does not resemble the Jewish notion of resurrection. He notes in this regard, “…no pagans known to us ever imagined that resurrection could or would really take place, let alone offered any developed framework of thought on the subject.”

Though Paul views the resurrection through the lens of his Jewish background, he alters it considerably, “indicat[ing] that he thought he knew something more about what resurrection was, something for which his tradition had not prepared him.” He develops and changes the Jewish tradition in four respects:

[1] Resurrection was now happening in two stages (first Jesus, then all his people); [2] resurrection as a metaphor meant, not the restoration of Israel (though that comes in alongside in Romans 11), but the moral restoration of human beings; [3] resurrection meant, not the victory of Israel over her enemies, but the Gentile mission in which all would be equal on the basis of faith; [4] resurrection was not resuscitation, but transformation into a non-corruptible body.

As Wright notes, “the only explanation for these modifications is that they originated in what Paul believed had happened to Jesus himself.” It is very difficult to imagine why Paul (with his pharisaical training) would have ever changed the restoration of Israel (the metaphorical meaning of resurrection) to the foundation of the kingdom of God which would include the Gentile peoples, and then extended the privilege of resurrection to these Gentile peoples, unless he had experienced the resurrection as a “kingdom-initiating” event – the establishment of a new Jerusalem. Furthermore, it is very difficult to imagine why Paul would have moved from the Jewish tradition of resurrection to one which entails a “transformation of our embodiment through a sharing in divine glory,” unless he truly believed that we would share in the same glory he had witnessed in the risen Jesus. Paul’s movement from the “this worldly,” “Israel-centered” notion of resurrection, to the universal “other worldly,” “transformation in divine glory” view of resurrection, and his placement of this movement at the very center of his theology, makes no sense unless he had another source of evidence for resurrection beyond the Jewish tradition.

It is very likely that this additional evidence was his experience of the risen Jesus, because Paul’s departures from Jewish tradition resemble those in the Gospel narratives and other New Testament sources. It would again be very difficult to imagine how all of these peculiar departures from Jewish tradition occurred within a multiplicity of non-overlapping sources without their having shared a common historical origin. Given that these peculiar departures from Judaism are found in the risen Jesus in all three non-overlapping Gospel narratives (Matthew, Luke, and John), and that this description corresponds to Paul’s own experience of the risen Jesus, their common origin may be reasonably attributed to Paul’s and other early witnesses’ experience of the transformed embodiment of the risen Jesus. This conclusion will be taken up in detail in the next unit which is devoted to Wright’s arguments for the historicity of the resurrection.

Common Features in the Resurrection Narratives

The resurrection stories present us with the most divergent narratives in the entire New Testament which led some 19th and early 20th century exegetes to cast suspicion on their historicity. Yet, contemporary scholarship reveals that there are significant similarities within the narratives that point to their origins not so much in a common narrative tradition, but in a common experience (pointing to a common historical event). If the narratives were similar, one could conclude that they came from a common tradition, but then one would be left with the question of whether that common tradition was historical. In contrast to this, the resurrection narratives present us with similarities within significantly different narratives. These similarities reveal a very early attempt to describe an occurrence never before seen or experienced, which defied all known categories of description and explanation. This would mean that the resurrection narratives should be dated very early (close in time to the actual events) because more time would have allowed for correlations of the narratives and the formation of common traditions. The virtual absence of these correlations and common traditions in the resurrection narratives makes this conclusion quite plausible, and turns the differences in the narratives into a corroboration of (rather than a detraction from) historicity.

So what are the similarities within these very different narratives? They all attempt to describe an appearance of two seemingly opposed elements in the risen Jesus—an element of corporeality (embodiment) and an element of transmateriality (spiritual transformation not conditioned by the laws of physics.) When this analysis is complete, I hope to leave the reader with one central question: how could these narratives, in their own unique ways, point to the same unprecedented synthesis of opposed qualities if that synthesis had not in fact occurred? How could multiple traditions have developed to describe it? The answer seems to lie in the fact that the authors of these traditions were trying to describe an unprecedented event without the benefit of seeing common traditions (or even other attempts to describe it). This makes the differences in the resurrection narratives a blessing in disguise because they do not lead us back to a common tradition whose historicity may be questioned; rather, they lead us back to an historical occurrence which has a common unprecedented element, namely, the synthesis of the transcorporeal with the corporeal.

Are there other indications of an early date for the resurrection narratives? Write identifies five of them, namely, (1) the resurrection narratives (concerning the appearances to both the women and the disciples) make no reference to scripture, which would be highly unlikely if the traditions/narratives had a later origin; (2) all three Gospels contain appearances to women which are absent in Pauline and other references (Wright believes that these appearance narratives are not later than the ones to the disciples because they too are free from scriptural reference – meaning that they are early in origin – and because they are less significant in witness value than the appearance to the disciples); (3) the Gospel narratives do not mention the future Christian hope in the resurrection (moving from Jesus’ resurrection to our sharing in His risen life) which is contained in the Pauline and other resurrection texts; (4) they do not attempt to explain (either theologically or ontologically) the difficulties in the bifurcated appearance of Jesus (which later interpretations would have been expected to do); and (5) none of the traditions attempts to reconcile itself with any other tradition, which would have been expected if the traditions were formulated at a later period (as was done in the Marcan Appendix – Mk 16:9-20 – which was relatively late in origin).

These five indications provide very strong evidence that the resurrection narratives were written prior to 1Corinthians 15 and the other Pauline works (prior to 50 AD), because Paul does use Scripture with reference to the resurrection and the risen body, he does express hope in our future resurrection, and he does attempt to explain the corporeal and noncorporeal elements through his notion of “spiritual body.” Paul’s treatment of the risen body contains all of the developments one would expect of later explanations of the resurrection of Jesus, yet the resurrection narratives remain silent about all of them.

The probity of Wright’s arguments for an early dating of the resurrection narratives makes it difficult to claim that the corporeal elements in those narratives were written as later apologetical and/or theological accretions. This leaves us with the conclusion that both corporeal and noncorporeal elements were placed into the narratives at their original (early) date of composition.

This conclusion is significant for two reasons. First, it reveals that the witnesses very likely saw Jesus in a form which included both corporeal and transmaterial dimensions. Secondly, it makes us take seriously the prima facie evidence contained in the narratives which shows other important aspects of the resurrection appearances.

Before assessing the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection (in Unit II-D), we will proceed to an investigation of what the narratives are trying to say about the appearance of Jesus to the early witnesses. I will briefly present some of my conclusions to this investigation in order to explain how I derived them.

I would maintain that Jesus’ appearances took place in more than one of the following three ways:

(1) An appearance which starts out as fundamentally corporeal and then takes on transcorporeal dimensions (such as disappearing from sight). This seems to characterize the appearance to the women and to the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

(2) An appearance which starts out as transmaterial (appearing like a spirit, appearing through locked doors, appearing as exalted – clothed in divine glory) and then takes on corporeal dimensions resembling Jesus’ pre-resurrection embodiment, including a manifestation of the wounds of crucifixion (though not a resuscitated corpse). This seems to characterize Jesus’ appearance to the disciples through the closed doors in Luke.

(3) Jesus’ appearance as both transmaterial and corporeal at the same time (e.g., a transfigured state where “His clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them” – Mark 9:3). This might apply to all of the traditions about Jesus’ appearance to the His disciples.

Inasmuch as Jesus is transformed, He can appear in any way He wishes – corporeal first and then transcorporeal, transcorporeal first and then corporeal, or transcorporeal and corporeal at the same time. It seems that Jesus’ early appearances to the women were of the first category, while His later appearances to the disciples were of the second and/or third categories.

This conclusion will be borne out by an assessment of:

(1) the appearance to the women,

(2) the appearance to the disciples on the mountain in Matthew,

(3) the appearance to the disciples who were gathered together in Luke, and

(4) the two Johannine traditions of appearances to the disciples (in the closed room and at the Sea of Tiberius).

The Appearance to the Women

Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene (and “the other Mary” in the Gospel of Matthew) is remarkable in its primary occurrence within the Gospels. When one considers that the witness value of women in first century Judaism was relatively insignificant, and that the primary appearance to the women seems to “upstage” Jesus’ appearance to Peter and the other apostles, one wonders why Matthew and John included these appearances in their Gospels if they were not true. Placing insignificant witnesses in a primary position which upstages the future leadership of the Church makes no apologetical or theological sense, if it did not really happen. It seems that the women were rewarded for their journey to the empty tomb early in the morning on the first day of the week – and that their fidelity would be heralded for the rest of history.

Jesus appears to the women in both Matthew and John in a very earthly, corporeal way. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus appears in an immediately recognizable form, and the women are able to embrace His feet. One gets the feeling that Jesus is planted firmly on the ground, and that His body can be touched like any other human body (see Mt 28:9-10). There is very little evidence that Jesus has been transformed. This stands in marked contrast to Matthew’s account of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on the mountain which evokes their worship. He then declares that “all power (authority) in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt 28:18). One cannot avoid the impression that Jesus is appearing in glory and power.

This corporeal appearance to the women is reinforced in the Gospel of John; but a problem of interpretation must first be overcome. As we shall see below, John’s propensity is to bring to the foreground the corporeality of Jesus, while pushing to the background the transmateriality, the “spiritual body,” and the divine-like appearance of Jesus. This might mean that John is not reporting history when he speaks of Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene as corporeal, but only that he is writing out of his tendency to bring the corporeal to the foreground.

Yet, there is a very intentional clue in the Johannine narrative that indicates that the appearance to Mary Magdalene is more corporeal than the ones to the disciples. In John 20:17 Jesus declares to Mary, “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Aside from the obvious tactile reference of “holding on to Jesus” (which occurs only in Jesus’ appearance to the women in Matthew and John), we see a reference to Jesus not having ascended. In general, the ascension of Jesus is connected with His exaltation, and in John’s Gospel ascending to the Father denotes Jesus assuming His divine glory. Why would John say that Jesus had not yet ascended to the Father in His appearance to Mary Magdalene, while saying that He will have ascended to the Father before His appearance to the disciples? I believe that it demarcates the way in which Jesus appears. If this conjecture is correct, then it would mean that Jesus appeared to Mary in a very corporeal form, but appears to His disciples in a more transmaterial form. As will be shown in Section II.D below, John reports that Jesus appears to his disciples in a transmaterial and “divine-like” way. But I do not want to get ahead of myself. For the moment, suffice it to say that Jesus’ declaration to Mary makes little sense unless it refers to what John interpreted as a pre-ascension (pre-exaltation) appearance to Mary, and a post-ascension (post-exaltation) appearance to the disciples.

Is this all there is to these stories? Did Jesus appear in merely a corporeal form to the women? Even though the stories suggest that Jesus appeared in this form, both contain hints that He is more than mere corporeality. In Matthew’s Gospel, we see that after embracing Jesus’ feet, the women worship. As will be shown below, this term is restricted to God alone, and to post-resurrectional uses in the Gospel of Matthew. It cannot be thought that Matthew used this term arbitrarily or carelessly (see below, Section II.B), and therefore it seems likely that the Evangelist wants to point to something in Jesus’ appearance that manifests divinity.

The same holds true for the Gospel of John. After declaring to Mary that He has not yet ascended to the Father, Jesus says, “But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I ascend [anabainō – present tense] to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (John 20:17). This leaves us with the distinct thought that Jesus is in the process (present tense) of being exalted as He leaves Mary. Though the indication of exaltation or transformation is reserved to the end of the pericope, it is inescapably there.

In sum, the Matthean and Johannine narratives about appearances to the women are dominantly corporeal. Yet, they contain clues that Jesus’ appearance (and nature) cannot be restricted to this. Matthew places the incongruous word “worship” next to the embracing of feet, while John declares that Jesus is ascending (being exalted) with the Father as He leaves Mary. It is difficult to write off the historicity of these narratives (and the description of the risen Jesus contained in them), because the appearance to the women makes little sense if it is not true, and Jesus’ corporeal appearance to them is incongruous with the more spiritual or exalted appearances to His disciples (see below, Sections II.B through II.D). So we are left with Jesus having a corporeal form (continuous with His rising from the tomb), yet possessing (or in the process of coming to possess) a dimension of transmateriality (and divine glory).

The Appearance to the Disciples on the Mountain in Matthew

Matthew narrates Jesus’ risen appearance to the apostles as follows:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw (idontes) Him they worshipped (prosekunēsan) Him, but some doubted (edistasan). And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority/power (exousia) in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age. (28:16-20).

Matthew’s narrative of Jesus’ risen appearance is probably the first to be formulated. Fuller conjectures that it was based on selections from a pre-Matthean list of resurrection appearances. This is not inconsistent with Wright’s contention that the resurrection material in Matthew’s Gospel comes from a very early tradition which the Evangelist has placed into a refined theological context:

All of [Matthew’s material] is present, not as though it were derived from Paul or anyone else, but as though Matthew himself had mulled over the early stories for a long time and retold them in this form while allowing them to remain, essentially, early stories.

Though Matthew does not explicitly describe Jesus’ appearance as power and glory, he certainly implies it when giving three indications of Jesus’ divine appearance:

1) the apostles worshiped (prosekunēsan), 2) Jesus’ disclosure that “all authority/power (exousia) in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” and 3) some of the apostles’ inability to recognize Jesus (“some doubted”).

Each will be taken in turn.

(1) The apostles worshiped (prosekunēsan). The apostles’ reaction upon seeing Jesus was to worship. This implies that Jesus had a divine appearance. Matthew uses “worship” only five times outside the infancy narrative (which has special compositional and redactional features):

(a) Matthew 4:9 (“And he said to Him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’”)

(b) Matthew 4:10 (“Then Jesus said to him, ‘Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.”’”)

(c) Matthew 14:33 (“And those in the boat worshiped Him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’”)

(d) Matthew 28:9 (“And behold, Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him.”)

(e) Matthew 28:17 (“And when they saw Him they worshiped Him, but some doubted.”)

Of the five uses of “worship” (prosekunēsan), two are clearly post-resurrectional (Matthew 28:9 and 28:17) and two are meant to reserve its use for God alone (Matthew 4:9 and 4:10 – “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve”). Only one refers to Jesus prior to the resurrection (Matthew 14:33 – “And those in the boat worshiped Him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God’”). This last use seems to fall outside the above restricted usage pattern in Matthew’s Gospel; but subsequent consideration reveals that it may fall into a post-resurrectional usage. It occurs within the passage of Jesus walking on the water which many scholars believe to be a post-resurrection appearance to Peter placed within a pre-resurrection (ministerial) setting. McKenzie notes in this regard:

The incident is so singular in the Synoptic narrative that many commentators propose that in its original context it belongs after the resurrection of Jesus. Whether this was the original context or not – and it seems probable that it was – the story, like the preceding story, has a symbolic significance.

If McKenzie and others are correct here, then outside the context of the infancy narratives, there are only two ways in which “worship” is used. One which reserves its use to God alone and the other which restricts its application to Jesus in a post-resurrectional setting. This would seem to indicate that Jesus appeared to Peter, the women, and the Eleven in a form worthy of worship, that is, in a form consistent with Jesus’ admonition to the devil, “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.” It would seem that Jesus appeared like God. This is confirmed by further inspection of the passage.

(2) Jesus’ disclosure that “all authority/power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Authority (exousia) generally refers to physical and mental power, or the power with which one is endowed or possesses. It has a strong sense of governmental power and can also refer to the power of spiritual beings. Matthew’s narrative indicates that “all (pasa) power/authority” has been given to Jesus, and for him, there is only one Being that possesses such power and that is God.

Fuller and other scholars concur with this conclusion and tie the Matthean narrative to Daniel 7:14 (the appearance of the Son of man). Fuller notes in this regard:

The source of this picture of the delivery of all authority to the Son by the Father is Daniel 7:14, where it is stated of the “one like a son of man” that to him “was given (LXX edothē) dominion (LXX, B text: exousia) and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples (B text: panta ta ethnē tēs gēs) … should serve him; his dominion (LXX exousia) is an everlasting dominion.” … [The passage’s] solemn character, rhythm and subject matter (a basic kerygmatic assertion, viz., the enthronement of the Risen One) give it a hymn-like character celebrating the enthronement of Jesus as Son of man. In Matthew 28:18 this hymn-like fragment is still presented as a word of the [already] exalted One. …Matthew’s appearance to the eleven is a Christophany of the resurrected and ascended One.

When one combines this use of “all authority/power in heaven and on earth” with the use of “worship” it is difficult to deny that Matthew intended to communicate an appearance of Jesus in an exalted and divine-like state. This is additionally confirmed by another feature of the narrative.

(3) Some of the apostles’ inability to recognize Him (“some doubted”). The theme of doubts is in every narrative about Jesus’ appearance to the apostles, and therefore likely originated with a very early tradition. Fuller believes that it may belong to one of the early lists to which the Matthean author made recourse.

To what do the “doubts” in Matthew’s narrative refer? They do not refer to a doubt that something is appearing; the first two lines clearly contradict this; nor does it refer to a doubt about an exalted One appearing (for the reasons mentioned above). Therefore, this phrase likely refers to the apostles’ failure to recognize Jesus in the appearance.

But why would the apostles fail to recognize Jesus in the appearance? There would seem to be only one explanation within the context offered by “full authority/power in heaven and on earth” and “worship,” namely, that the appearance was initially one of power and glory, manifesting the “spiritual” part of Paul’s “spiritual body” (pneumatikon sōma). It was an appearance that elicited worship. It was like a theophany (an appearance of God), and therefore, the apostles did not at first recognize Jesus through the indicators they had come to know in His ministry – His flesh and blood embodiment.

Even though Matthew does not specifically address the corporeality of the risen Jesus (as Luke and John do), the context in which the appearance narrative is contained reveals that the risen Jesus is continuous with His previous embodiment. Beyond the explicit corporeal appearance to the women there is the empty tomb, and beyond the empty tomb there is the controversy about where Jesus’ body could be. As Wright notes:

[Matthew’s] risen Jesus was sufficiently “bodily” not only to leave an empty tomb behind him but to generate a complex controversy, between Christians and their opponents, about how such a thing could have come about, which would be inexplicable unless both sides knew that the claim concerned bodily resurrection (Verses 11-15 are, in other words, incomprehensible except as a reflection of some kind of actual debate; but such a debate is itself incomprehensible except as the result of a claim, not about a disembodied “life after death,” however glorious, but about bodily resurrection.)

Even though Matthew’s rendition of the early Easter tradition portrays Jesus as essentially transformed in power and glory, the context in which the appearance narrative is conveyed speaks very clearly about the continuity between the embodied Jesus in the tomb and His glorious appearance to His disciples.

The candidness with which Matthew speaks about the apostles’ failure to recognize Jesus manifests the historical veracity of his narrative, particularly in view of its apologetically unappealing tone. Why would the early Church admit to doubts about Jesus’ identity in the appearance? It would only cause doubt in believers. The answer lies not only in the fact that the apostles had doubts, but also in what those doubts reveal, namely, that Jesus had changed in His reality and appearance. His transformation was immediately apparent – veiling the embodiment which he still possessed. This was the mirror image of His ministry where His apparent embodiment veiled His divinity. By taking an apologetical risk and speaking freely about the apostles’ failure to recognize Jesus in the appearance, the Evangelists were able to reveal a radical change in Jesus’ reality and appearance while manifesting a continuity between the earthly Jesus and the divine Jesus.

The Appearance to the Eleven and Others in Luke

Luke relates Jesus’ risen appearance to the apostles as follows:

[The disciples to whom Jesus appeared on the road to Emmaus] found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, who said, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” … [Then] Jesus Himself stood among them. But they were frightened (ptoēthentes) and terrified (emphoboi) and thought they were seeing (theōrein) a spirit (pneuma). And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts (dialogismoi) arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it and ate before them. (Luke 24:33-43)

Luke’s appearance narrative to the disciples stands in contrast to Matthew’s. Where Matthew never directly mentions Jesus’ corporeality, Luke can barely stop talking about it. Does this mean that there is complete disagreement between Matthew and Luke about the way Jesus appeared? The answer, of course, is no.

Matthew does not neglect the corporeal dimension of the risen Jesus. He presents Jesus’ continuity with His embodiment in three prior passages (the empty tomb, the controversy about the disappearance of Jesus’ body, and the corporeal appearance to the women). Likewise, Luke does not neglect the spiritual appearance of Jesus. He presents Jesus as suddenly appearing to the Eleven (and others) as if He came out of nowhere and He appears to be a spirit – so much so that He has to convince His disciples that He really is embodied and not just a spirit: “handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Why does Jesus have to protest so much about not being a spirit if His embodiment is so natural (that is, if He is appearing like a resuscitated corpse)? Why does His appearance shock and terrify the disciples if it is so naturally embodied? Why does it cause doubts (dialogismoi) if His embodiment is so obvious? The answer must be that, despite Luke’s emphasis on Jesus’ corporeality, Jesus had clearly changed. When He appeared to the disciples, He was initially spiritual, and this spiritual presence elicited shock and terror.

As in Matthew’s Gospel, we see the theme of doubts. And again, we are compelled to surmise that the disciples are not doubting that something is appearing or even that something spiritual/transmaterial is appearing. So we are left with the conclusion made above, namely, that the apostles are having difficulty recognizing Jesus in the spiritual/transmaterial appearance, presumably because this transformation made his corporeal identity difficult to recognize (before he specifically reveals it).

Then the story turns, and the spiritual/transmaterial One shows them His hands and feet. There is no reason why Jesus in His spiritual/transmaterial state could not manifest Himself through human corporeal features (indeed, He could have appeared in any way he wished), and so this corporeal self-manifestation should not be written off as non-historical..

Furthermore, one cannot write off the historicity of a corporeal self-manifestation of Jesus because Luke attributes flesh, bones, and eating fish to the risen Jesus. Though Luke has clearly gone to the limit in adding flesh and bones and the eating of fish to his retelling of the story, this does not mean that he did not inherit a primitive tradition which included a dimension of embodiment along with a very pronounced dimension of spirit to describe the risen Jesus. Indeed, it is difficult to believe that Luke did not inherit such a tradition. Otherwise, he would have introduced a needless and confusing tension (between spiritual appearance and corporeal appearance) into his narrative. If Luke’s interest was apologetical and anti-docetistic (giving Jesus back His body), why include the two pronounced references to Jesus’ spiritual appearance? Conversely, if his intention was apologetical but not anti-docetistic, why not emphasize the spiritual appearance of Jesus which clearly reveals His vindication (spiritual/transmaterial transformation)? I suspect that the reason Luke does not eliminate the confusing (and apologetically unappealing) tension, is because he received a primitive tradition (similar to the one received by John) which contained both elements. Though Luke may have enhanced the corporeal elements in his narrative, it is unlikely that he invented them.

Luke is not the only one who presents this contradictory appearance of the risen Jesus. The Johannine tradition also presents it in its narrative about the same event (see below, Section II.D), and Saint Paul presents it in his idea of the risen “spiritual body,” which implies that Jesus is both embodied and spiritual; that He is continuous with His earthly embodiment, yet transformed in incorruptibility, immortality, power, and glory.

Does this mean that Luke borrowed Paul’s notion of spiritual embodiment and translated it into narrative form? Wright’s thesis about the early dating of the narratives renders this hypothesis very implausible. Paul’s theology is far more developed and attempts to reconcile the spiritual and embodied dimensions of the risen life with terms like “kernel,” “sown in,” “raised in,” and “clothe itself in.” In contrast to this, Luke does not even attempt to reconcile the spiritual and corporeal dimensions of the risen Jesus. He has no vocabulary of continuity (“sown in”) and transformation (“raised in”). He almost awkwardly presents a spiritual Jesus trying to convince His disciples that He has real embodiment even though it really doesn’t seem like it. Furthermore, Luke does not use scripture or present the future Christian hope grounded in Jesus’ spiritual embodiment. As Wright contends, all evidence seems to point to the fact that Paul developed and expanded the earlier Gospel tradition (such as the one retold by Luke), not vice versa. At this juncture, it may do well to recall Wright’s conclusions here:

Supposing that by Paul’s day all early Christians believed that something extremely strange had happened to Jesus, the strangeness consisting not least in this, that though he was bodily alive again, his body was somehow different. Supposing Paul was providing a theoretical, theological and biblical framework for stories which were already well known – stories which, indeed, he is summarizing when he quotes an already official formula at the start of 1 Corinthians 15. … What if [the stories in Matthew, Luke, and John] represented, with only light editing, the stories that had been told very early on, without offering theories about what sort of a thing this new, risen body might be, without attempting (except at the level of minor adjustments) to evoke wider theological themes, without adding the element of hope for one’s own resurrection, and in particular without the biblical quotations or allusions that might have done for these stories what was done for so many, so recently in the same books. … I find this second option enormously more probable at the level of sheer history.

Thus it seems that Luke was presented with a primitive tradition which included both a spiritual and a corporeal dimension of the risen Jesus. He retells this story by adding proofs of Jesus’ corporeality beyond the ones given in the primitive tradition to assure his audience that the risen Jesus was in continuity with His earthly embodiment. Though he is faced with presenting an apologetically unappealing tension, he remains faithful to what seems to be the experience of the early witnesses of the risen Jesus – an experience which is independently received and attested to by both Paul (who attempts to explain it) and John. We now proceed to that Johannine tradition.

The Appearance Narratives in John

There are two narratives about Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in the Gospel of John: the appearance in the closed room (John 20:19-29) and the appearance at the Sea of Tiberius (John 21 – the so-called Johannine Appendix). Though these two resurrection narratives are dependent on different traditions, the Johannine author has used the same device to describe the transformed dimension of the risen Jesus in both narratives. As we shall see, John’s retelling of these primitive traditions gives the impression of being corporeal, but he infuses a very obvious clue about the transformed divine-like appearance of Jesus in his intentional use of the title “ho Kyrios.” We begin with the closed room narrative which resembles Luke’s appearance to the Eleven. The titles “Jesus” and “the Lord” are marked to draw the reader’s attention to an important narrative device used by the author.

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord [ton Kurion – with the definite article]. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have see the Lord [ton Kurion – with the definite article].” 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 not believe.” Eight days later, 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, “Pease be with you.” Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.” Thomas answered Him, “My Lord and my God!” [ho Kyrios mou kai ho Theos mou! – both with the definite article]. Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

When first reading these narratives, one gets the impression that Jesus appeared in a corporeal form (similar to His appearance to Mary Magdalene). He stands in a closed room and on the seashore; He is in dialogue with Thomas in the closed room and with Peter in the boat; He shows them His hands and His side in the closed room; and prepares breakfast on the seashore. Though John is careful not to give a physical description of Jesus, one gets the impression that nothing has really changed since His ministry.

One may at first wonder how this seemingly corporeal narrative retains the characteristics of Jesus’ spiritual/transmaterial appearance contained in the Matthean and Lukan narratives discussed above. There are three cryptic yet evident indicators:

1) Jesus’ appearance through the closed doors,

2) the apostles’ non-recognition of Jesus in the appearance, and

3) John’s use of “ho Kyrios” in the narrative.

(1) Transmaterial qualities. John takes great pains to point out twice that “the doors were shut” in the place where the apostles were, yet Jesus appears in their midst. John here is pointing to the transmaterial dimension of the risen Jesus which clearly manifests that He is not a resuscitated corpse, and is beyond the physical world’s constraints. Again, one can be certain that John did not haplessly make this twofold reference to the closed doors. One can sense the same purposely introduced narrative tension used by Luke – but in reverse. While Luke begins with the appearance of Jesus as a spirit and later introduces corporeal elements into the narrative, John begins with a seemingly corporealized Jesus who is performing spiritual/transmaterial actions. The intentionally introduced tension reveals the Evangelist’s attempt to combine Jesus’ spiritual/transmaterial appearance with His continued humanity.

(2) Difficulties with recognition. Jesus’ explicit showing of His hands and side implies a self-revelation very similar to that of Luke, which further implies some need for self-revelation (i.e., uncertainty on the part of the apostles). This is confirmed by the words of Thomas who says that his doubts can only be resolved by seeing and feeling the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side. When Jesus appears again to Thomas, He reveals Himself in this very way. When the clues in the whole narrative are assembled, doubts, resolution to those doubts, and self-revelation come together to indicate uncertainty about the presence of Jesus. Even though John is inclined to be cryptic about this uncertainty (because he has already portrayed Jesus as corporeal in the narrative), he is seemingly insistent about this theme. Why introduce doubts, internal narrative tensions, and uncertainty into a perfectly good appearance narrative? The explanation would be that there really was uncertainty about Jesus in the appearance, implying that His appearance had changed. How had His appearance changed? As noted above, John reveals that Jesus possessed transmaterial qualities, but even more tellingly, his use of “ho Kyrios” shows that those transmaterial qualities probably resembled divine power and glory. The next point will make this clear.

(3) “Ho Kyrios.” There are special uses of “Kyrios” which can refer to the Septuagint (Greek) Old Testament translation of the divine name (Yahweh ). One such special use is “ho Kyrios” (with the definite article) in the Gospel of John after the resurrection. Recall Raymond Brown’s conclusions about the fourth Gospel’s use of this term which distinguishes between an ordinary use of Kyrios (i.e., “master” or “sir”) and the divine use of Kyrios through the definite article “ho.”

Notice that John does not use “ho Kyrios” (with the definite article) of Jesus before the resurrection, but uses this title frequently after the resurrection. This seems odd because John certainly believed that Jesus was “Lord” (ho Kyrios) prior to the resurrection (see John 1:1-3); so why, then, would he not use ho Kyrios of Jesus in the narrative part of his Gospel prior to the resurrection? An explanation lies in the apostles’ apparent inability to recognize Jesus’ divinity prior to the resurrection and gift of the Spirit, and conversely, their apparent ability to recognize His divinity after His appearance and gift of the Spirit.

This conjecture is confirmed by John’s use of “ho Kyrios” (set out in italics in the above passage--John 20:19-29) and “Jesus” (underlined in the above passage--John 20:19-29). Notice that “ho Kyrios” is the only dimension of the apparition recognized and proclaimed by the apostles. “Jesus” is not recognized or proclaimed by the apostles in the narrative:

• “Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord” (v. 20)

• “So the other disciples told him, “We have see the Lord” (v. 25)

• “Thomas answered Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (v. 28)

The use of “Jesus” is reserved to the narrator alone (who does not use “ho Kyrios”):

• “Jesus came and stood among them” (v. 19)

• “Jesus said to them again” (v. 21)

• “Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came” (v. 24)

• “The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them” (v. 26)

• “Jesus said to him” (v. 29)

One gets the distinct impression that the Evangelist is trying to convey that the apostles are experiencing “the Lord” (ho Kyrios with the definite article, referring to the divine name). They are experiencing an appearance of the divine One, but Jesus’ identity is obscure. Therefore, His identity must be revealed to us by the narrator, and Jesus must reveal it to His disciples through the wounds in His hands and side.

The same careful usage of “ho Kyrios” and “Jesus” pervades the Johannine Appendix (John 21) which concerns Jesus’ appearance to Peter and other disciples at the Sea of Tiberius:

Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, have you any fish?” 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 [ho Kyrios – with the definite article]!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord [ho Kyrios – with the definite article], he put on his clothes, 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. 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.” … 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 [ho Kyrios – with the definite article].

Once again, we see the same pattern. The apostles only recognize “the Lord” (“ho Kyrios” – with the definite article, indicating the divine name), while the narrator has to present the true identity of who is appearing, namely, Jesus.

If the reader did not pick up the significance of this pattern, the Evangelist takes it upon himself to clarify the matter by a most unusual turn of phrase, “Now none of the disciples dared ask Him, ‘Who are you?’ They knew it was the Lord.” This declaration makes absolutely no sense outside the context of pointing out that what the apostles are experiencing is “the Lord” – an experience of divine power and glory. By declaring that “none of the disciples dared ask Him, ‘Who are you?’” the narrator reveals that there is uncertainty or doubt about who is appearing. Then, he reveals that the apostles knew that it was “the Lord.” If the apostles knew that it was the Lord, then what are they uncertain about? The explanation lies in the unique patterned use of “ho Kyrios” and “Jesus” in the two pericopes. It would seem that they are uncertain about the presence of Jesus in the appearance of divine power and glory.

Again, one might ask, “Why did John introduce this very confusing and apologetically unappealing passage about doubts and uncertainty into this narrative? In my view, the answer resides in his desire to tell the reader what the apostles were really experiencing – namely, the Lord, and what they were really uncertain about – namely, the presence of Jesus in that divine-like appearance.

When one follows the clues about Jesus’ divine-like appearance given in the use of ho Kyrios, and in the passages about His transmaterial characteristics and the apostles’ doubts, one might begin to think that Jesus appeared solely in an divine-like state, and that the corporeal features of the narrative were merely figurative ways of showing that the exalted One was really Jesus. But this is a leap that cannot be sustained by the textual evidence. The corporeal features in the narrative may not have been figurative at all, but rather, a narrative way of expressing a corporeal dimension in Jesus’ appearance. Though these corporeal features would have been transformed by Jesus’ spiritual/transmaterial state, they would have been sufficient for the apostles to recognize Jesus in the appearance. Why wouldn’t Jesus have revealed His retention of His humanity through corporeal features which point to His crucifixion? Given Jesus’ corporeal appearance to Mary Magdalene, this does not seem out of the question. Clearly, this interpretation would be consistent with Paul’s spiritual body (pneumatikon sōma), and with Luke’s indications of corporeality in the appearance to the Eleven.

But this leads to the further question – why didn’t John just simply state what he meant, that is, what really happened? Why didn’t he say that a manifestation of divine power and glory appeared to them as they were fishing, and that Peter (and the other disciples) came to know that it was Jesus through characteristics they recognized from His ministry? The same question could be asked of the closed door narrative. Why didn’t John just say (like Luke) that Jesus came into the room in a spiritual/transmaterial way, and then revealed Himself through corporeal features which pointed to His crucifixion?

The explanation is probably the same as the one given for Matthew’s and Luke’s account of the apostles’ doubts, namely, that the transformed spiritual characteristics of the risen Jesus had the potential to “outshine” His human and corporeal characteristics. How could John make sure that the embodied dimension of the appearance was not, as it were, outshined by the dazzling appearance of a transformed Jesus? His solution seems to have been to reverse the images – that is, to put the less obvious image (the corporeal aspect of the risen Jesus) at the forefront of the narrative, while putting the more obvious image (the transformation of Jesus in power and glory) in the background of the narrative (with his use of “ho Kyrios” and his clues about transmateriality).

Conclusion. The Evangelists give ample evidence that Jesus was both transformed in spirit and glory while retaining features of His humanity and corporeality. With respect to His transformation in spirit and glory, we see “worship” and “full authority/power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me” in Matthew; the terrifying and astonishing appearance of a spiritual Being in Luke; and transmaterial implications and the unique use of “ho Kyrios” in John. Jesus’ changed appearance is also communicated through the apostles’ uncertainty in all the narratives (despite its non-apologetical appeal).

With respect to His retention of humanity and corporeality, we see, in Matthew, the remarkably corporeal appearance to the women (which sets the context for the transformed appearance to His apostles); in Luke, the multiple references to Jesus’ embodiment (including the revelation of wounds in His hands and feet, His declaration that He has flesh and bones, and even eating a fish); and, in John, the corporeal appearance to Mary Magdalene (with the declaration that “I have not yet ascended to the Father”) and the corporeal features embedded in the appearances to the disciples.

Though one must be careful about taking some of these indicators of corporeality too literally (e.g., the risen Jesus having bones and eating a fish), the presence of corporeal features in all of the above traditions indicates that they were very probably present in the appearance of the risen Jesus. Though Luke’s inclusion of Jesus’ bones and eating a fish, and John’s corporeal retelling of the appearance stories may be historically problematic, they reveal the centrality of these corporeal features to the Evangelists, and their desire to assure that those features would not be outshined by the seemingly more obvious spiritual/transmaterial/glorious features in the appearance.

This unlikely, tension-filled, spiritual-corporeal appearance of the risen Jesus corresponds remarkably to Paul’s explanation of risen life in 1Corinthians 15:

It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible. It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body (vv. 42-44).

Thus, we have four traditions which either describe or explain this very unusual (non-Jewish and non-pagan) view of Jesus’ resurrection: Matthew, Luke, John, and Paul.

Given Wright’s analysis of the dating of the narratives (before 50 AD ), and the core similarities amidst many narrative differences, it seems likely that their content was derived from a common experience of the risen Jesus as both transmaterial and corporeal. These traditions made their way to the Evangelists who retold them to accent themes within their Gospels. Two of these Evangelists (Luke and John) emphasized the corporeal features of the appearance to make certain that they were not overshadowed by the spiritual/transmaterial features. There may have been some theological purpose for doing this (e.g., to accentuate the continuity between the cross and the resurrection, or to highlight the continuation of Jesus’ humanity), but the major reason would seem to be historical – namely, that there truly was a corporeal dimension of Jesus’ risen appearance. Why? Because the narratives are less concerned with explanation than description, and Paul, who seems to provide the first theological explanation, is not trying to make the facts fit his theology, but rather to make his theology fit the highly unusual and hitherto unimaginable facts.

We now return to the main historical question – How could three different narrative traditions (which evidently do not have a common narrative root) resemble one another and the writings of Saint Paul in the complex, hitherto unimagined description of the risen appearance of Jesus? It is difficult to resist the conclusion that there must have been a common historical event, which the early witnesses tried to describe through different narrative devices, but which all point to a similar experience of a spiritual/transmaterial and corporeal risen Jesus. This conclusion will be corroborated through Wright’s four arguments for the historicity of the resurrection in the next unit.

What is the theological significance of Jesus appearing in this spiritual/transmaterial and corporeal form? It reveals God’s loving plan in the Incarnation by showing that Jesus’ humanity continues; that His transmateriality transforms, but does not annihilate His embodiment; that the resurrection is the fulfillment of the Incarnation – not the overcoming of it. His spiritual/transmaterial state does not remove the human state through which he is interpersonally accessible (as peer) to the apostles in His ministry. Jesus is still human in this sense. He is still empathetically related to us as brother.

Footnotes

↑ Habermas 2006, p. 79, italics mine.
↑ Habermas 2006, p. 80.

Habermas 2006, p. 79, italics mine.

Habermas 2006, p. 80.

Lüdemann 1994, pp. 106-7, 174-75, and 180.

Marxsen 1970, pp. 88-97.

See Habermas 2006, pp. 84-86. See also Davis 1999, pp. 57-58: “All of the alternative hypotheses with which I am familiar are historically weak; some are so weak that they collapse of their own weight once spelled out.”

Habermas 2006, p. 86.

Habermas categorizes luminous appearances as “subjective.” I do not agree with this classification because “subjective” would ordinarily mean that “something happened to Jesus’ followers” instead of “something happening to Jesus.” Advocates of the luminous hypothesis (such as Reginald Fuller and Joachim Jeremias) did not intend such a “subjective” meaning. They thought that Jesus appeared as light (that is, that He was mediated in the physical world in a luminous way that could be collectively – as distinct from intrasubjectively – experienced by His followers). This luminous appearance could explain Paul’s implication that the risen Jesus appeared in divine glory (see 1Cor. 15).

Jeremias 1971, p. 308.

Fuller 1971, p. 47.

Dodd 1962, p. 16.

Four of the key elements here are: 1) its formulaic character, 2) in the Acts of the Apostles, the occurrence of doublets in a style diverging from Luke’s, 3) the absence of any theological interpretation from a later era of the Church, and 4) a Semitic and Aramaic background identified originally by Torrey 1916. For a fuller explanation, see Dodd 1962, pp. 19-22.

See Brown 1973, p. 81.

Jeremias 1966, pp. 101-103.

Fuller 1971, p. 11.

See below Section I.C. and also Jeremias 1971, pp. 307-308.

Fuller indicates “that the appearances to Peter and to the Twelve share a common function. In these appearances the Risen One initiates the foundation of the eschatological community: they are church-founding appearances” (Fuller 1971, p. 35).

"[The first two appearances] must be distinguished from the later appearances, whose function is the call and sending of apostles to fulfill a mission” (Fuller 1971, p. 35).

Fuller 1971, pp. 34-35.

Fuller 1971, p. 36.

Jeremias 1971, pp. 307-308.

Fuller 1971, p. 36.

“In a wider use [brother] signifies a person of common ancestry and relationship; in particular, a member of the same clan or tribe (e.g., Nm 16:10). It is extended to members of the same race or nation (e.g., Dt 15:12) or of a kindred nation (e.g., Dt 23:7). In the NT Christians are called brothers about 160 times, and Jesus Himself said that one who does the will of the Father is His own brother (Mt 12:50; Mk 3:35; Lk 8:21).” (McKenzie 1965, p. 108).

Fuller 1971, p. 37.

Fuller 1971, p. 38.

McKenzie notes: “A similar use transferred to a religious sense seems to lie behind 2 Co 8:23, where the apostles mentioned are not apostles in the technical sense, but missionaries or messengers sent by particular churches” (McKenzie 1965, p. 46).

See Fuller 1971, pp. 40-1.

Fuller 1971, p. 40.

It is quite certain that the women discovered the empty tomb, but their absence from the list of witnesses in the 1Cor 15 kerygma is puzzling. Many exegetes believe that the women were the first to receive an appearance of the risen Christ, but that their witness value in a creedal list was less significant because of Jewish practice and law (see Brown 1973, p. 122, note 204 – “their testimony would have less public authority”).

Wright develops this point further: “…it is noteworthy that 15.1-11 as a whole clearly speaks of a public event for which there is evidence in the form of witnesses who saw something and can be interrogated. As we saw earlier, those who have wished to say that the risen Christ was not that kind of being, that the resurrection was not that sort of event, that it did not have that kind of evidence, and that any witnesses would simply be speaking of their own inner conviction and experience rather than the evidence of their eyes, have had to say that Paul has here undermined the point he really should have been making” (Wright 2003, p. 383).

Wright 2003, p. 382.

See Wright 2003, pp. 312-374.

Trans. by Revised New American Bible 1995.

Wright 2003, p. 383.

Wright 2003, p. 387.

Wright 2003, p. 386-387.

Wright 2003, pp. 389-90.

See Wright 2003, p. 390.

Revised New American Bible, 1995.

Wright 2003, pp. 31-84.

Wright 2003, p. 272.

Wright 2003, p. 276.

Wright 2003, p. 276. Italics mine.

See for example Unit II-F, Section III with respect to miracles and Unit-II-G, Sections II and III with respect to Jesus’ self-revelation.

See Stewart 2006, p. 21; and also Wright 2003, pp. 609-612.

Fuller 1971, p. 80.

Such a list is speculative but there is good reason for postulating its existence because of certain correlations within the resurrection narratives. It would have been similar to the list in 1Corinthians 15, but seemingly more detailed. This list may have contained features about the resurrection appearances, such as details about a glorified Christophany and an appearance on a mountain. It may have also included details about an appearance in a closed room and even an appearance to a large crowd in Jerusalem (accompanied by the Holy Spirit). For Fuller’s explanation of the “list features” in Matthew’s early narrative, see Fuller 1971, pp. 80-82.

Wright 2003, pp. 645-646.

McKenzie 1968, p. 89. There are many indications of post-resurrection vocabulary. For example: “they were terrified” (compare Matthew 14:26 to Luke 24:37), and “It is a ghost!” (compare Matthew 14:26 to Luke 24:37). The confessional statement “Truly you are the Son of God” manifests divinity and also points to a post-resurrectional setting.

Fuller 1971, p. 83. Last three italics mine.

“Accordingly we may conclude that the phrase ‘some doubted’ in Matt. 28:17 comes from early tradition. Since there is no evidence prior to Matthew’s Gospel for the existence of appearance narratives, we surmise too that a reference to doubts may have occurred in some lists of appearances…” (Fuller 1971, pp. 81-82).

McKenzie 1968, p. 113.

Wright 2003, p. 646.

I will restrict myself to the appearance to the Eleven and others in Luke because the Emmaus story is very difficult to interpret. Though the Emmaus story clearly portrays Jesus as corporeal, it also portrays Him as transformed. He can take on an appearance completely different from the one He had during His ministry, and He disappears from view immediately after he is revealed in the breaking of the bread. However, for our purposes of attempting to get to the bottom of “how Jesus appeared,” it is probably best to concentrate on Luke’s narrative about the appearance to the Eleven and others – which has a common root with the Johannine narrative describing the same event.

The Docetists diminished and even denied the humanity of Jesus, reducing His humanity to a mere appearance. The full-blown heresy came much later than the writing of the Lukan narrative (about 190 AD). Even though Luke might have experienced a very early form of Docetism in his community (perhaps explaining the reference to flesh, bones, and eating fish), it does not seem likely that this motivated his report of Jesus revealing Himself through the corporeal features which pointed to His crucifixion, because these same corporeal features are present in the Johannine closed room narrative, and are also blatantly evident in the appearance to the women.

Wright 2003, pp. 610-611.

The two narratives probably came from a similar “closed room” tradition.

McKenzie 1965, p. 516.

Brown 1970 (vol. 2), p. 984. See also pp. 994, 1010, 1072, and 1077.

This narrative very probably originated in a pre-Johannine tradition which recounts the first appearance of the risen Jesus to Peter (the first appearance in the 1Corinthians 15 list), and which is correctly placed in Galilee. There are remnants of this tradition in at least one pre-resurrectional setting. See Luke 5:4-11 (the miraculous catch of fish, where one can see several parallels with the Johannine Apendix in vocabulary and narrative structure).

John 21:4-12.

See Stewart 2006, p. 21, and also Wright 2003, pp. 609-612.

[1] Habermas 2006, p. 79, italics mine.

[2] Habermas 2006, p. 80.

[1]

[2]

Resurrection Accounts

Contents

Evidence of the Historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection in Saint Paul

The 1Corinthians 15 Kerygma

Who are the Witnesses in the 1Corinthians 15 Kerygma?

The Meaning of Ōphthē in the 1Corinthians 15 Kerygma

Paul’s Experience of the Risen Jesus

Paul’s Experience of the Risen Jesus – Implications in his Writings

Paul’s Experience of the Risen Jesus as Described in the Acts of the Apostles

Paul’s Validation of his and other Witnesses’ Claims about Seeing the Risen Jesus

Wright’s Argument for the Historicity of Paul’s Experience of the Risen Jesus

Common Features in the Resurrection Narratives

The Appearance to the Women

The Appearance to the Disciples on the Mountain in Matthew

The Appearance to the Eleven and Others in Luke

The Appearance Narratives in John

Footnotes

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