11
WE HAVE SEEN that Paul, the earliest Christian writer, based his work on his spiritual visions. The Gospels are later than Paul. They reflect the religious needs of a later generation of Christians. Inherent within them is not just the story of Jesus’s life from several different believers’ points of view but also a further generation’s reflections on the issues of faith, religious authority, and the afterlife. And, more than anything else, the Gospels are devices for the mission of the church, a different and broader mission than envisioned by Paul. Within the Gospels we see not only the synthesis of immortality and resurrection that Paul naturally provided but a battle to keep any extraneous notions of immortality of the soul out of the story of the Christ. It took centuries before Christianity could find an acceptable formula for incorporating it into the story of Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection. Neither body of writing gives us what actually happened. Each shows us a Christ who illustrated a unique and different view of the afterlife.
For Paul, faith meant belief in the validity of Paul’s own personal revelations of the resurrected Christ. Paul’s faith was based upon his own experience, his visionary revelations; so faith, vision, and knowledge were all deeply interwoven for him. His inward life was parallel to and indicative of the redemption of the world. Not so for those who worked within the apostolic tradition into which Paul fought so hard for inclusion. For them, the inward process became secondary and the redemption of the world primary. For them, faith meant belief in those who interpreted the story because they received their knowledge from those original apostles who sat at the feet of Jesus and witnessed the events in his life, death, and resurrection. Faith was trust that the traditions that came through the apostles was the correct teaching. It was a lineage of ministry and education but not visionary knowledge.
The earthly Jesus, conversely, had little to do with Paul’s faith for he never met the man Jesus. Paul became a Christian because of his “vision of the risen Christ.” For him, Jesus’ resurrected body was a spiritual body (soma pneumatikon). But for the evangelists, Jesus’ resurrected body was a literal, physical body revivified. This exactly correlates with the approach of the apostolic succession, which is not based on visions of Christ (although it acknowledges their validity as a conversion experience) so much as on the personal testimony of those most trustworthy men who had witnessed the events of Jesus’ life. There are, in fact, a variety of models for conversion in the Gospels (see e.g., Matt 12:38-42; Mark 1:16-20; 1:40-45; 2:13-17; 8:34-9:1; 19:46-52; Luke 5:1-11; 8:1-3; 13:1-5; 19:1-10). They involved men and some women who changed their lives radically to follow the teachings of Jesus, whose interpreters are the apostles. These stories take up a remarkable amount of space in the relatively compact narration of Jesus’ ministry in Mark, for example. The importance of these stories as new and important models for conversion, as well as Luke’s depiction of the conversion of Paul in Acts, cannot be underestimated.1 The Gospels were edited for use in Christian mission.
The apostolic notion of resurrection is deeply affected by contrasts with Paul. Even the plain description of the events in Jesus’ life came out altered from Paul’s description. What Paul described in visionary terms, the evangelists describe literally. It is as if Paul represents the mystic dimension of Christian experience while the Gospels represent the apocalyptic dimension. In flat contradiction to Paul, the Gospels (when they discuss the process of resurrection at all) strongly assert a physical, fleshly notion of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. It is this physical resurrection which most suits their mission of conversion. The Gospels were written for the conversion and maintenance of the community. Even the ritual life of the community reflected this missionary impulse.
The Eucharistie Words of Jesus
THE EUCHARIST words of Jesus in the Gospels are emblematic of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark, the Lord’s Supper is described in the following manner:
And as they were eating, he took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” (Mark 14:22-25)
This was a ritual in which the community, as well as the original disciples, could participate. The two other Synoptic Gospels hardly change the words of this passage. Matthew adds “When I drink it new with you in the kingdom of God” emphasizing the future liturgical role of the believer in the “Lord’s Supper” (Matt 26:29). Luke adds a prophecy of the betrayal of Jesus (Luke 22:21-22). It stands to reason that if the church is going to become the body of Christ, then the primary ritual of that church’s identity is going to have to display the literalness of the resurrection of the body. And it does, certainly here in the Gospels. Not only are the words constitutive of the community of those who believe in Christ, the bread and wine become the flesh and blood of Christ. The Gospel of John, often thought of as the most spiritual Gospel, is actually even more graphically literal in its depiction of the bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (John 6:53-54).
The eucharistic words of Jesus are rather close in every version. But there are some interesting additions to the Pauline version (1 Cor 11:23-32). In the first place, Paul sets the words at the Last Supper, which sides with the Synoptic Gospels as over against John. Paul’s version used the modifier “which is for you” right after the “This is my body.” This statement modifies the literal implication of the Gospels and emphasizes that the actions are set in a liturgy, an imaginative act of reenactment leaving open that the statement is itself a spiritual object of remembrance rather than a literal, physical action.
Paul also said that the ritual is to be enacted “in remembrance of me.” Paul found remembrance (anamnesis) to be the basis of his spiritual life in Christ. But remembrance is something that takes place in the mind as part of a liturgical event. It is not the event alone which makes the ritual effective, because Paul described ways in which the liturgical moment could be violated by improper behavior. He said that one must “examine oneself” and “discern the body” in the ritual, meaning that the perception of the reality of the body of Christ is partly the responsibility of the participant. This process is one of intention and correct spiritual orientation. Luke also used the term anamnesis (Luke 22:19) to describe these events and perhaps he wished to bridge any gap between the other Gospel writers and Paul; he certainly shows this motivation in Acts. But Paul was far more acutely aware of the role of the participant using anamnesis and religious imagination in making the rite effective than are any of the Gospels.
To be sure, Paul and the Gospels present us with two different inscriptions of the same event. Persons holding these conflicting interpretataions of the event could have worshiped together. Both are constitutive for the Christian community, hence the body of Christ which is His church. But their understanding of resurrection, the body of Christ, and the role of the believer was quite different. Paul put more demands on the believer’s consciousness. In short, in all the canonical Gospels, the Christ is physically present in the wine and bread. For Paul the sacrament was real but the discernment of the sacrament is in part mediated by the spiritual attitude of the participant. The nature of the resurrection in the Gospels will be parallel to this important distinction between them and Paul, the earliest Christian writer.
The Gospel of Mark
THE GOSPELS’ assertions about Jesus’ resurrection can be seen preeminently in the empty tomb tradition, which adumbrates in different ways in the different Gospels.2 The tradition ramifies so as to emphasize that the resurrection was a physical event, that the resurrected body arose physically and was no longer to be found in the tomb. Part of this depiction is simply good storytelling. The Gospels present a narrative in ways that Paul never attempted. The transformation of this tradition to a literal bodily resurrection may also be polemical against the solipsistic dangers inherent in the Pauline testimony.
And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus. And Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph. And he bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus saw where he was laid. (Mark 15:42-47)
This report is the basis for the literary tradition concerning the resurrection of Jesus in the Gospels.3 It contains all the details necessary for understanding the resurrection tradition, which follows next in Mark’s Gospel and links the narrative with the crucifixion report, which immediately precedes it. It accounts for how Joseph of Arimathea is part of the tradition, without stating that the tomb in which Jesus was placed was Joseph’s. It gives us a signficant reason why the two Marys are the first to visit the tomb after the resurrection and it suggests that ordinary Jews would have taken steps to make sure that any corpse was buried in accordance with Biblical law. What follows is the account of the discovery of the empty tomb:
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see just him, as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.4 [The Shorter Ending of Mark v 8b] And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. (Mark 16:1-8b)
THE LONGER ENDING OF MARK
The longer ending in Mark is a historical problem entirely of itself. It is poorly attested in the ancient authorities, though it is part of the received text, hence also used in the Gospel reading for the Ascension Day and the Book of Common prayer. It seems to contain within it some of the traditional material of the later Gospels, which argues that it was written after the other Gospels were already written. Eusebius and Jerome (fourth-century, Church Fathers) both knew the tradition but raised doubts as to its authenticity by saying that it was missing in many Greek manuscripts known to them.5 It surely represents another justification for the gentile mission: “And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news [Gospel] to the whole creation’” (Mark 16:15). Perhaps it also represents the quickening of apocalyptic sentiment following the Second Jewish War against Rome:
The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (Mark 16:16-18)
It separates the ascension from the resurrection by three days and explicitly demonstrates that the risen Christ is the Son of Man enthroned next to God in Daniel 7:13 (v 19), invited to do so by Psalm 110:1:
“So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.
It also shows that Christian proselytizers were healing and performing miracles in Jesus’ name. Most of all, it provides a solution to some problems posed by the abrupt, shorter ending of Mark. It is a later reflection on the primitive Gospel tradition, demonstrating that we are dealing with important and deeply felt religious documents but ones that will hardly hold up to our contemporary notions of historiography.
THE SHORTER ENDING AND THE BURIAL
The shorter ending is more historically credible and far more enigmatic. Yet, one cannot demonstrate that even the sparse tradition of an empty tomb in the shorter ending is authentic to the time of Jesus. Paul gave us the earliest form of the resurrection tradition, and he was silent about the empty tomb. The shorter ending argues for a physical resurrection because the body was missing. Yet, the shorter ending does not necessarily contradict Paul because Paul believed in transformed flesh. In other words, the shorter ending did not of itself establish the physical resurrection of Jesus.
One might argue Paul’s testimony that Jesus was buried implies an empty tomb and although his notion of resurrection is spiritual, it implies transformed flesh. In that case, one would argue it was the empty tomb itself that provided an alternative interpretation of a resurrection. That is very rational, but it does not correspond to the facts as I understand them. The early tradition is solid about the experiences of the women on the Easter morning, less solid on the antiquity of the empty tomb. So the issue hinges not on what might be the most logical hypothesis but on what evidence is the most ancient.
Religiously, we are confronted with a mystery, the source of the faith of a large section of the human race. The narrative itself is designed to stimulate that faith. The absence of the empty tomb in the writings of Paul suggests that he did not know about it, although it is always possible that the tradition existed already, that he knew it and merely did not mention it, or even that he did not like it. Lack of confidence in the empty tomb tradition might follow from Paul’s silence. Furthermore, it calls into question the burial itself, on which it depends, which was neither a likely outcome of a Roman execution nor was it credible in its own right. It is so manifestly polemical as to raise the issue of credibility immediately. Dom Crossan has pointed this out in his characteristically dramatic way by suggesting that the body might have been tossed to the dogs.6 This is a provocative suggestion and it does serve to emphasize the questionable nature of the Joseph of Arimathea story.7 On the other hand, Jesus’ burial is a stable part of the Gospel tradition and Paul explicitly said that Jesus was buried. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4: “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.” Perhaps the reason the burial is mentioned is precisely because it was unusual for the Romans.
THE SCANDAL OF THE RESURRECTION
Crossan is certainly right that lack of burial would have been a scandal in the ancient world and that burial itself was somewhat unlikely for a political execution. But Christianity could have accommodated to that scandal if Jesus’ body actually remained unburied. That does not end the issue of scandal in the resurrection narrative. Few commentators actually describe what seems to me to be the obvious scandal that the tradition of the empty tomb seeks to ameliorate. The fact is: No one actually saw Jesus arise.8 This is a critical difficulty for the early mission of the church. The empty tomb tradition does face and then finesse the issue that no one saw Jesus rise. That does not firmly argue against its historicity but it tends to make a historian suspicious.
What can be demonstrated historically only is that no one actually saw Jesus’s resurrection. Had there been witnesses they would not have been left out. I agree with Lüdemann that the original experience of the risen Christ must have been visionary appearances after death and that they must have started, as tradition has it, on the first day after the Sabbath, Easter Sunday. Paul gives us a good example of the intensity and purity and piety of those visions. If Paul is an example, believers would certainly have viewed visions as the actual presence of Christ and anticipatory of the end-times, which had already started and would soon be fully actualized. I suspect the visions of Peter and even James and the others were similar: They convinced Jesus’ followers that he not only survived in a new spiritual state but that that state was as the manlike figure in heaven, “the Son of Man,” whose reign inaugurated the millennium. Missionary work, however, demanded even more obvious proof. It demanded that Jesus himself, in the same body, walked among them.
This could hardly have been an issue for Paul, who had seen the risen Christ and was sure of Christ’s presence in his life. For Paul the scandal of the new faith was the scandal of the cross, not the scandal of the resurrection. It was that: “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23). The notion of a crucified Messiah was an oxymoron, a contradiction-in-terms to Jews, who thought that the Messiah should be victorious, just as surely as it was folly to the gentiles, who thought an executed man was unworthy of veneration. Paul gives us the difficulty of the first generation of hearers of the Christian message in naked terms. The Gospels give us the developed missionary strategy for removing these doubts.
The Gospels, which go into the details of Jesus’ life (which Paul never did) and so answer all such questions narratively, also provide cogent, historical answers, a missionary strategy to alleviate the doubts of the hearers to all historical problems, including why no one actually witnessed the resurrection. This raises the historical witness question to a crucial level. The empty tomb itself becomes the vehicle for alleviating that dearth of testimonial evidence for the resurrection, as well as the demonstration that the post-resurrection appearances were not hallucinations.
THE CORE OF THE EMPTY TOMB TRADITION
The core of the empty tomb tradition, at least in Mark, is simply that when some of the women (as we shall see, there is considerable confusion as to who went to the tomb in the various Gospels) came to anoint the body after the Sabbath, they found the tomb empty, and they left in a state of fear and perplexity (Mark 16:8). The Greek word for fear in Mark is ekthambesthai (fear, marvel), which is both the normal Biblical word for “fear” and consistently used in Mark and elsewhere to reflect a reaction to the awesome presence of the divine. It is better translated as “they were in awe.” In fact, throughout the Hebrew Bible, the term “fear” was also used to express “awe” and associated religious emotions. Someone who “fears” God is a religious person, not a frightened person, for the Hebrew Bible.
The later Gospels describe the young man as an angel, though Mark did not. Yet, that was a safe inference for Mark’s intention; even the most primitive tradition, here in Mark, must mean that the young man (neaniskos) in a white robe sitting on the right side was an angel.9 But, if so, it is interesting to note the way in which Mark deliberately underplays his narrative, letting the reader make the reasonable conclusion.
The answer of the young man: “Do not fear!” also is typical of angelophanies. Significantly, the angelic message is a short statement of Christian kerygma: “Jesus … the crucified has been raised, he is not here.” The presence of the angel, therefore, shows that the story is being treated as an apocalyptic angelophany and revelation. It was, as well, tailored for missionary purposes. Like Paul, this Christian variety of apocalypticism seems at first devoid of the florid imagery of visions that apocalypticism often produced. This simplicity is better suited for missionary purposes, as florid imagery was an intellectual, exegetical tradition, which would have confused ordinary gentile and Jew alife. Here, in a popular context among Jews and in the gentile mission, there would be little reason to propound complicated, symbolic visions based on Biblical models. The church needed, short, pithy statements of its core beliefs which could be used in mission and liturgy.10
In the narrative, the angel functions to defeat any criticism, which must have been early and serious, that the empty tomb was due to the theft of the cadaver or a resuscitation. Paul’s discussion of this in 1 Corinthians 1 leaves us in no doubt about the early presence and seriousness of the criticism of the Christian proclamation. But, as historians, the issue is otherwise. It is neither clearly false nor clearly true. Scholars who look to this moment to confirm or deny faith are asking too much, historically, from this religious narrative.
Mark 16:8, which closes the shorter ending of the Gospel, is one of the most portentous endings in literature: “And, going out, they fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” Apparently, the word got out.
This is no way to end a Gospel! The ending is, however, the effect of artifice, for no Greek sentence can properly end with the word gar. It is even more difficult than ending a sentence with the word “furthermore” in English because grammatically gar should not be the last word in a sentence. Consequently, the current Gospel has been artifically separated from its true, original ending. In context, this phrase is followed by the commissioning of the disciples, in either the shorter or longer versions. There is no telling whether we have the original ending somewhere in the shorter ending, somewhere in the longer ending, or it simply disappeared. Possibly, the Gospel of Matthew preserves it, as it parallels Mark generally; but it is impossible to identify. The one sure thing is that the current critical text was not the Gospel’s intended ending.
The empty tomb has considerable narrative value, even though it does not present us with an indubitable historical truth, like the lack of witness to the resurrection itself. It is always conceivable that, against our best logic, it actually happened. But, even if it did, the story of the empty tomb is not a particularly strong affirmation of the central events of Christianity, especially in comparison to the dramatic and life-changing personal visions of Paul.
One positive aspect of the empty tomb tradition, over against Paul, is that anyone there might have been able to verify it; unlike Paul’s visions, the empty tomb is at least verifiable in principle. The empty tomb tradition objectifies the issue of confirmation by claiming that the events took place in normal, historical time. The Gospels’ proclamation is different from the Christ preached by Paul in that they tell the story of Jesus’ life, resolving a great many issues of Jesus’ personality and intentions to the satisfaction of the second generation of Christians. The problem is that the solution was tried in different ways by a number of different narrators, creating a perplexing lack of agreement in the different Gospels, exactly at the moment when they should all agree. On the other hand, the diversity speaks to the importance and historicity of the Early Church’s spiritual reactions.
The empty tomb also resolves another important problem: It denies the notion that Jesus’ resurrection existence is merely as a “spirit,” no different in theory than any other death.11 Beliefs in ghosts or “shades” seem to be almost universal in the popular culture, then as now. The ancient Hebrew notion of nefesh (nepeš), supported by its many ancient Near Eastern parallels, as well as the popular notion of ghosts and shades in Hellenistic culture, all suggest that the easiest explanation for what happens to the dead is that they become ghosts. Describing Jesus as a “spirit” unreasonably risked turning Jesus into a “ghost.” More exactly, if Jesus were described as a “spiritual body,” in ordinary historical time, instead of the Pauline “spiritual body” in a revelatory vision, the narrative would appear to be saying that Jesus was just another “disembodied soul,” the same postmortem, ghostly form as is available potentially to everyone at death. To support the experience of Jesus’ resurrection, his postmortem form needed to be more tangible than that.
It is probably too early in Christian tradition to sense a defense against a related problem for Christianity, the problem that the concept of the immortal soul of Platonism will cause. That is a thorny intellectual problem that vexed the Church Fathers. But we can anticipate the problem by noticing that it has something in common with figuring the postresurrection Christ as a “spirit” or a “ghost.” In Platonism the soul is immortal by nature, so assuming that Jesus’ immortal soul is what survived his death only says that his death was normal and without special import. As a result, it too totally undercuts any statement of Jesus’ saving death. If one analyzes the death and presumed postmortem sightings of Jesus using the theory of an immortal soul, there is no necessity (or even possibility) of positing his saving death on the cross. If Jesus survived death as merely a ghost or spirit, then the only immortality is already available to all as a matter of the soul’s nature. But the church maintains that Jesus’ death is not ordinary. He died as a martyr and was resurrected as one, ascending to heaven to be exalted together with the “Son of Man” in Daniel 7:13, showing that the end-time had begun. Thus, his resurrection not only should be bodily, it must be bodily or it is not significant for the salvation of the world.
The Gospel of Matthew
BY THE TIME of Matthew, several further apologetic features have been added to the story. These appear to grow naturally out of difficulties in the Markan version of the story. The Matthean community evidently attempted to resolve some of the ambiguities in the Christian message created by Mark’s story, issues that we have already enumerated. Part of the problem is the brevity of the narrative, even if some further short conclusion beyond “the shorter ending” can be assumed.
After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” While they were going, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. After the priests had assembled with the elders, they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers, telling them, “You must say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story is still told among the Jews to this day. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority 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, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:1-20)
The Matthean evangelist demonstrates to us that by the time of this recension of the story, the wider community-probably both Jew and gentile-is aware of the empty tomb tradition. It can be assumed that some people, probably Jews because they would often be the first hearers, treat this story with some derision (Matt 27:62-66; 28:11-15). This suggests that after hearing the story of the resurrection, a skeptic’s natural response was: “Someone has conveniently stolen the body.” The Gospel’s narrative defense against that attack is ingenious. According to Matthew, it’s all due to the Jews. The Jews entered into a conspiracy by paying the Roman guard soldiers at the tomb to report that the disciples themselves stole the body. This enters the critical report of the detractors of Christianity-those encountered by the missionaries in the Matthean tradition in their daily work-into the historical record right where it can be defeated most easily. Since that important detail is absent in Mark, it must be a later gloss. It is a scurrilous detail, with anti-Semitic implications, which protects the bulwark of the empty tomb tradition.
To the Matthean narrator, it is easier to understand the criticism that the body could have been stolen as a calumny started by some unbelieving Jewish hearers of the Gospel who had bribed the pagan soldiers to lie, than to argue against the claim in some more theoretical way. The tradition probably reflects the existence of real, external, anti-resurrection polemic, whether Jewish or not would not matter, as we know from Paul that both gentiles and Jews had trouble believing in either the resurrection or the Messianic proclamations of Christianity.
The Gospel of Matthew also includes the additional famous calumny that the death of Jesus is the responsibility of the Jews forever: “And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Matt 27:25). It is the Romans who execute Jesus, possibly in collusion with some of the priests. It is not the Jewish nation as a body who assented to it. But theologically, if some Jews were complicit in the death of Jesus, this could be seen as furthering God’s plan for the world’s redemption.
Why then are the Jews singled out for calumny? In view of the adumbration of the empty tomb tradition that we find in Matthew, it looks as if the real problem is that some Jews doubt the resurrection. But doubt is a universal phenomenon; believing Christians also have it and must deal with it, no matter how sincere their faith.12 The writers of this document wanted to banish doubt. Doubt is potentially a problem in the missionary message of Christianity and equally a disquieting problem for the faith of any believing Christian. If doubt is present, it can always be exorcised by hatred of the Jews. Since it is the Jews who raise the doubt, scapegoating both defuses Jewish doubt but also quiets the nagging suspicion within. In this psychological fact of scapegoating, and not the passion narrative itself is the real dynamo of Christian anti-Judaism. The root of the problem is the inadequacy of the empty tomb tradition to serve as a positive demonstration of faith. Jews made the crucial mistake of being the first to point this out.
The Gospel of John
EVEN THOUGH the Johannine Gospel developed independently of the Synoptics, it likely had access to an early form of the Gospels of Mark and Luke for a number of important details, especially in the resurrection narratives. The Gospel of John also argues the physicality of the resurrection, possibly even earlier and more concretely than the received Markan version:
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 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 them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” A week later, his disciples were again in the house and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:1-31)
The beginning of this Johannine passage may, in fact, evidence an earlier form of the empty tomb tradition than Mark 16, possibly enriched by contact with Matthew and Luke. But no scholarly consenus has emerged. It is even possible that the Johannine version helped Matthew with some of the details of his retelling. Furthermore, it stands in polemical relationship with the Gospel of Thomas.
The Johannine form simply notes that Mary Magdalene visited the tomb alone, and, finding it wide open and empty, suspected that someone had stolen the body, and she hurried to report the matter to the other disciples. She repeated this story until Jesus himself explained the events to her directly. Here is a version of the “stolen body” tradition which is not polemically fitted to the problem of Jewish scepticism. It rather looks as if we have found, in John’s Gospel, the earliest nugget of the story of the “stolen body” motif. It is not necessarily a Jewish charge but just a logical conclusion from the empty tomb defined by a revelation.
The Gospel of John also has its own apologetic concerns to articulate, which it develops immediately afterwards. First, the importance of scriptural precedent for Jesus’ resurrection is stressed, although, as is usual throughout, the specific Scripture is not mentioned: “For as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” Second, various christological formulas are emphasized in showing that Jesus is now “Lord” and “God” (John 20:22-23). Jesus commissioned the disciples and actually breathed the Holy Spirit into them, demonstrating visually that his spirit is found within the church: “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 them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’” (John 20:28).
The church was given the power and legitimacy to forgive sins, as Jesus himself is said to have done during his ministry, a very powerful and important power that was more relevant to the post-Temple period of the Johannine church than it was to the initial disciples. The empty tomb tradition illustrates one reason that the church preserved different Gospels. To be sure, each Gospel’s portrait of Jesus adds to the characterization of the others and helps produced a fuller portait. But the same is true of the polemical value of the Gospels. Just as important for the scrappy Early Church is that each Gospel polemicizes against different criticisms of the claims of the church. Since no Gospel contains all the arguments, and indeed a number of arguments are contradictory to each other, especially in narrative form, no one synthetic Gospel could be created.
The Gospel of John portrays Jesus’ resurrection in very physical terms, though it is universally acknowledged to be the most “spiritual” Gospel. In spite of its spirituality (and its depiction of the glorious, victorious rather than a suffering Jesus), John’s understanding of the resurrection was very material and fleshly: John’s Jesus had been resurrected bodily and physically. Paul’s prior notion of the apocalyptic significance of the progressive realization of spiritual bodies is not to be found in John.
The famous story of “Doubting Thomas” is often understood as John’s endorsement of the “spiritual body.” Careful analysis shows the opposite. Jesus appeared to the disciples in a locked room. Many claim that Jesus’ entrance into a locked room demonstrates his spiritual nature. It may just as easily demonstrate that his appearance was not a cheap magic trick. While the motif of the locked room appeared for the purposes of showing the miraculous nature of Jesus’ resurrection body, what happened after he materialized inside the room was a demonstration of the physicality of the resurrection body.
We think that a material or physical body cannot just appear in a locked room, so we conclude that the point of the story is that Jesus’ body is spiritually present. The ancient world had fewer presuppositions about physical possibilities in nature, especially when the point of the story was that God’s handiwork was being made miraculously manifest. If it were a science fiction story, say Star-Trek, which had said that Jesus was teleported to there from a spaceship we would have few problems accepting his physical and actual presence within the locked room. We understand that Jesus could be physically present if certain counterfactual, science fiction claims are accepted. The writers of this Gospel simply had different, counterfactural assumptions about the physical world. They wanted to stress the miracle that Jesus was a real body who miraculously appeared in a locked room. Thus, the story is in line with the other physical depictions of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. Doubting Thomas’ touching of Jesus’ wounds only confirms the intention of the evangelist. It is the concrete-ness of the depiction, not its spiritual nature, which is the point of the story.
The miracle of Jesus’ materialization led directly to Thomas’s demonstration of Jesus’ physicality. It also demonstrated, as the other stories did, that Jesus’ appearance was not merely the appearance of a ghost or spirit. The story draws the further conclusion, which is the most important point, that those who believe and have not seen what Thomas saw are even more blessed for their greater faith. We shall see that the Gospel of Thomas does evince an overtly visionary view of Christ’s resurrection.
In John 6, an explicit link between the resurrection and the eucharist is made. In John 6:35-50 we have one of John’s feeding stories about the manna in the wilderness. In this context, the living bread is the lifegiving word of Jesus. Whoever believes in him will be resurrected on the last day (John 6:40, 44). As opposed to the Synoptic tradition, John did not emphasize that God was the author of these actions. For John it was Jesus himself who was manifesting his power.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”
As we have previously seen, the physicality of the Eucharist is stressed in this passage. A number of readers have expressed almost a physical revulsion to the idea that Jesus could ordain his actual flesh and blood for consumption. But it is a symbolic statement. The evangelist’s language is straining to express the physicality of the savior’s resurrection, and his literal presence in the Lord’s Supper, not the literalness of the believer’s consumption. The resurrection of believers is linked to the physical ingestion of Jesus’ body in the Eucharist. A further scriptural proof-text is brought through the mention of “bread from heaven,” a typological reference to the Pentateuchal tradition of God’s saving provision of manna to the children of Israel in the wilderness. The comparison provokes a contrast: God will preserve those who eat of His mass, as opposed to the children of Israel who had no such dispensation and died. This argument evinces a clear type/antitype form. But the main subject is the ritual effectiveness of the Lord’s Supper. Verse 56 links the presence of Jesus in his resurrected state with the ritual itself. That is where and how he is physically present to the church of his believers, and not in visions.
The Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles
IT FALLS TO Luke to settle one important ambiguity left in John. Luke puts together an anthology of postresurrection appearances in chapter 24. In one of his postresurrection appearance stories the resurrected Jesus actually ate a meal:
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost [or spirit]. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. (Luke 24:36-43)
This is certainly another version of the “Doubting Thomas” story. Now the resurrected Jesus actually came in flesh and blood. He was not merely a ghost (pneuma) nor a “spirit,” which Luke explicitly denies, although it is precisely the word that Paul used for the kind of body that the Christ had in 1 Corinthians 14:44, a “spiritual body” (soma pneumatikon). The Gospel of Luke explicitly denies the very terms which Paul used to describe the resurrected presence of Christ.
Jesus not only showed his wounds and manipulated physical objects, as John portrays it, but he also ate. Jesus likely showed the apostles his hands and feet (Luke 24:40) because that is where he was wounded, as in the “Doubting Thomas” passage (John 24:20-29). Whatever traditions Luke may know, he certainly is the most articulate on the issue of the risen Jesus’ physical presence. He adumbrates the story of the empty tomb and must, in fact, provide us with forty days between the resurrection and the ascension in order to fit in all the appearances of the postresurrection Jesus. The other Gospels seem, rather, to assume that the resurrection and the ascension happened coterminously. Thus, the resurrection appearances of Jesus are post-ascension appearances as well.
In Luke, we see other important and revealing variants of the empty tomb tradition. But none are more fascinating than the Emmaus story, that Jesus physically came to teach that the empty tomb was not an idle story:
But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened. Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures. As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the Scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. (Luke 24:11-35)
The story provides a precedent for a number of issues-including the Lord’s Supper (Luke 24:30). Jesus’ presence at the meal is parallel to his literal presence in the liturgical rite of the Lord’s Supper. The story is also intended to demonstrate that the empty tomb tradition, at first thought to be an idle story worthy only of women within the community, was exactly what happened. The doubts raised by the “empty tomb” have nothing to do with the disbelief of the Jews; even the faithful have their doubts.
Conversely the Emmaus visitation provides yet another narrative argument for the credibility of the empty tomb. No less authority than Jesus himself demonstrated it (vv 25-26). This suggests quite strongly that the tradition of the empty tomb was not an effective argument. Nor were the advantages of a story of the empty tomb universally realized by the faithful within the church right away. Perhaps the implications of the long apologetic tradition of the empty tomb shows us more clearly why Paul did not mention it: He did not evidence a physically present Jesus and he did not involve himself in this kind of polemic. In Luke we have the final defense of the “empty tomb” both from within and without.
The ascension is then accomplished at the end of these appearances:
Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God. (Luke 24:50-53)
Luke’s depiction of the ascension seems a little jarring because Luke is concerned with the physicality of Jesus’ postresurrection appearance. In effect, Luke has resolved Paul’s quandary as to whether the heavenly journey of 2 Corinthians 12 was corporeal or spiritual. For Luke, it was clearly a bodily ascension. What makes this even more interesting is that Luke was aware of the primitive kerygma, which he repeated in two key places:
The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. (Acts 5:30-31)
Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,
“The Lord said to my Lord,
‘Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.’
“Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” (Acts 2:33-36)
Evidently this ascension did not involve a process of symmorphosis as in Paul, or at least that is never made clear. Yet, like Paul, these short statements of kerygma (Christian missionary proclamation, the central doctrines of the church) were based on inspired reinterpretation of Scripture and were used as evangelical sermons. Like Paul, they talk of Jesus’ passion and exaltation as part of the same process of salvation; passion and exaltation are two aspects of the death and resurrection of the Savior.
In any event, the identification of resurrection with enthronement is evident, and Psalm 110 is used as the proof-text. Enthronement is connected to Jesus’ Messianic status as well in Acts 2:33-36, where Psalm 110 is used to demonstrate that Jesus is both Messianic and divine. The second “Lord” in Psalm 110 designates the Messiah, implicates him in divinity, but cannot be identified with David himself.
Very likely though, it was originally the inscription on the cross which made this Messianic connection obvious to the later interpreters of the events of Jesus’ death.13 The themes of Messianic candidacy and enthronement of the righteous martyr come together at the crucifixion. As Timo Eskola has said: “First Christians located the enthronement of the Messiah in the eschatological event of the resurrection of the dead.”14 And it is clear that these connections are made by preachers who are involved in the earliest Christian mission. Jesus was proclaimed as the enthroned Messiah whose resurrection and exaltation were proof of the coming eschaton. According to Luke, this is what the good news of the early Christian missionaries was. Indeed, it is very close to the message that Paul preached as well. In both cases, the message depended on the presence of the Christ in the community in baptism, in the Lord’s Supper and in the gifts of the spirit which Luke links to the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.
Both of these passages might have appeared in Paul but for two further elaborations that are characteristic of Luke and completely uncharacteristic of Paul. Although Paul is distrustful of his Jewish brethren, Paul did not usually pile on anti-Jewish phrases like Luke: “whom you had killed” and “this Jesus whom you crucified.” These are characterics of a later time, when Jews and Christians are more at loggerheads. Whatever Jews were interested in Christianity had converted; the rest were skeptical, and many were hostile.
Between Paul and Luke’s account of the resurrection, the theme of Jewish opposition to the Gospel has again and again entered Christian tradition. It is coterminous with the missionary impulse of Christianity. The opposition to the Christian mission was usually symbolized by the Jews who were therefore reviled. To explain away opposition, demonization of the Jews was undertaken.15 Probably the Jews were used for this purpose because they were skeptical of the empty tomb tradition, to say nothing of the resurrection of Jesus, and many other claims of the church. The remarks of R. Abbahu in the Palestinian Talmud are later still but they are cogent and relevant:
R. Abbahu said: “If a man says to you, ‘I am God,’ he is a liar. If he says, ‘(I am) the Son of Man,’ in the end, people will laugh at him. If he says, ‘I will go up to heaven,’ he says so but he will not do it.” (jTa’anith 65b)
There can be no doubt that Rabbi Abbahu was speaking against Christianity. It succinctly summarized the opposition of Jews: (1) no human is divine; (2) the Son of Man in heaven is not a human; (3) no one ascends to heaven. This skepticism took some time to grow. It entered Christian literature after the “empty tomb” story was circulated in Mark. It made its most obvious entrance in an anti-Jewish polemic in Matthew. But doubt about the empty tomb also surfaced in several places within the Christian community, where it charactized Christians and new converts alike. In ancient times, as in modern times, people hate most in others what they fear most within themselves.
The Transfiguration and the Martyrdom of Stephen
THESE RESURRECTION traditions do give us a sense of the way in which Jesus was remembered by the earliest church. He was first of all savior and only secondarily, if at all, a wise teacher and moral example. One other place may show how Jesus was experienced by the earliest community. That is the transfiguration, which can easily be understood as a RASC experience of the risen Jesus, recast as a precrucifixion theophany:16
Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”-not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. (Luke 9:28-36)
Since the transfiguration (see also Mark 9:2-8 and Matt 17:1-8) is technically not a postresurrection appearance, we cannot study it here in detail. But it looks like an actual postresurrection experience of Jesus in the Early Church transferred back into the preresurrection narrative to serve as a foreshadowing of Christ’s resurrection. It also suggests that Jesus’ true nature was already perceptible in the preresurrection church. If so, it is not obvious to the participants. The disciples entirely mistake what is happening and behave in incomprehensible ways. The command to tell no one at the end of the Lukan version almost begs to be understood as an early recognition that many of the disciples did not know the transfiguration tradition until after the resurrection. It has many of the characteristics of an apocalyptic/mystical theophany: (1) The transfiguration takes place during prayer in the mountains, which is a significant convention for ecstatic experiences in Jewish apocalypticism. (2) The disciples’ mental states are described as awake but heavy as if sleepy, which is often used as well in descriptions of ecstatic visions. (3) They are given a vision of Christ’s glory, very close to the technical terminology in Jewish literature.
The details are even more suggestive. The cloud is a key characteristic of an appearance of the Glory of God. Most probably, it refers to the arrival of the “Son of Man” in Daniel 7:13: “As I watched in the night visions, / I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. / And he came to the Ancient One / and was presented before him.”
The voice in the cloud announces a message similar to the heavenly voice at the baptism: “This is my beloved Son, my chosen; listen to him.” The differences between this announcement and the baptism are, however, important. First, the “well pleased” is missing from this announcement. Second, this time Jesus is announced as chosen (eklektos), terminology that is characteristic of Enoch and other candidates for an gelification. The transfiguration is the mid-point in the story of Jesus’ self-revelation. The heavens are torn open when Jesus is baptized. After the crucifixion, the veil of the Temple is torn open. The transfiguration takes points from each and packages them into an theophany.17
Last and most importantly, the voice commands the listeners to obey Jesus, just as the voice of God commands the Hebrews not to foresake the angel of the Lord in Exodus 23:21-22. This suggests strongly that Jesus is now being further announced not just as Son and Messiah but also as the angelomorphic messenger, the man-shaped divine creature enthroned in God’s presence who can be identified with the angel who carries and, in some way, respresents the name of God, as in Exodus 23. The proper name for this figure in Jewish life contemporary with Jesus is the Kavod, the “Glory,” who is pictured as a large and shining human figure (see Ezek 1:26). This is the capital announcement of early high Christology, especially in Mark where it functions as the only appearance of Jesus’ resurrected body. Jesus is being acknowledged as human transformed into divinity-i.e., the principal angel of God, who partakes in God’s name as Exodus 23 predicts.
To what does this correspond in the experience of the Early Church? One distinct possibility for interpretation, among the many that have been tried, has not been much discussed by scholars: The transfiguration is not only a misplaced resurrection appearance but also a narrative of the ecstatic, spiritual life of Christians in the Early Church period.18 The transfiguration reflects visionary experience, not unlike Paul’s; but it has been concretized by the Gospel tradition. Jesus continued to be experienced personally within the church after his death and resurrection, primarily within the ecstatic (RASC) experience of the Early Church. This transfiguration story may tell us something of the way in which he appeared to the early Christians, the form that Jesus’ appearance took in the Early Church. It is certainly not very different from the kinds of visions of the Christ that Paul represents to us. It should be added to the other descriptions of ecstatic experiences, like speaking in tongues, in the Early Church.
Who is to say that Paul’s experience was not in some ways typical of the early Christians? He was more articulate and more privileged in receiving spiritual gifts. But perhaps his experience was more typical than he admits. What makes Paul’s experience so anomalous is that the Gospels, as opposed to Paul, assert the physicality of Jesus’ resurrection-his resurrection in bodily form. But Paul’s insistence on Christ’s spiritual body becoming more and more manifest should be equally important to church tradition.
Nor is the resurrection tradition in Christianity ever very far from the issue of martyrdom, which is where it began in the books of Daniel and 2 Maccabees. Like Paul, who identified with Christ and who saw that identification with Christ to take place in suffering as well as in baptism, the Gospel tradition seeks to glorify the persecution that some of the faithful are undergoing. The obvious example is the stoning of Stephen, which is narrated in Acts 7. Most of the chapter is given over to a speech that appears to be a missionary speech against the Jews. After the trial, the transformative aspects of martyrdom are narrated in Stephen’s execution scene:
Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth against him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the Glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the “son of man” standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:54-56)
Stephen has a vision of the “Glory of God” which contrasts strongly with the Pauline view of the heavenly economy. Paul identified Christ with the “Glory of God.” Luke describes the scene in terms given him by the early Christian tradition, directly from Daniel 7:9-14, so the “Glory of God” is identified with the Ancient of Days. The next verse identifies Jesus (not explicitly the Christ) with the “Son of Man” in the Gospels. But unlike the Daniel 7:9-14 scene in which the Son of Man is seated next to the Ancient of Days, Jesus as Son of Man is standing at the right hand of God. Likely, Jesus’ standing (as opposed to the enthronement of the Son of Man in Daniel) is to greet the martyred Stephen as he is exalted into heaven after his martyrdom. Stephen’s death is explicitly described as “falling asleep,” linking it firmly with the promise of resurrection in Daniel 12. Without Daniel 12’s prophecy of resurrection and exaltation, the Christian kerygma is incomprehensible. Conversely, Christianity is a specific figuration of Daniel’s promise that those who make others wise shall shine like the stars. In effect, they are the angels. Here we see Stephen achieve that reward.
Certainly, Luke understood this vision as the fulfillment of Stephen’s martyrdom, exaltation, and heavenly transformation, as his appearance at the trial makes clear: “And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15). For Luke, martyrdom was certainly one path to angelic transformation. But it seemed clear that all who are believers in Christ will receive that title, even those who are still on earth.
An Anomalous Reference to the Afterlife in Luke
THERE IS ANOTHER anomalous reference to the afterlife in Luke which may imply yet other notions of the afterlife as well. Luke 23:42-43 implies an intermediary stage to the afterlife as a spirit or soul. Jesus said to one of the thieves crucified with him: “And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ And he said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’” A number of theologians have used this passage to demonstrate that the notion of an immortal soul is antique within Christianity.19 And it could mean that; indeed likely it was interpreted in this way when the notion of the immortal soul was strongly fixed in Christianity.
But it would be unwise to conclude too much from this one, anomalous saying. It only assumes the Jewish notion of nefesh or the apocalyptic notion of the righteous souls being held in heaven until the end-time began, as we have seen in the early Enoch material. It is similar to the apocalyptic statement in Revelations 2:7 that the righteous will eat from the Tree of Life in Paradise until the end comes. Note that the passage in Revelation, which contains a reference to eating, is so dramatically physical that it cannot support any notion of the immortality of the soul. None of this dissuades the Apocalypticist from his expectation of bodily resurrection; at best it explains that the dead remain in a privileged, intermediate state until the final resurrection.20 They exist as bodies that can eat, “souls” in the ancient Hebrew sense of “ghosts,” “spirits,” or “shades,” and can remain secreted in Paradise. It does not change the impression that the missionary thrust of the earliest church was for the physical resurrection of Jesus, his physical presence in the liturgical life of the church, and the physical resurrection of all who believe in him, and no more suggests immortality of the soul than did such details as the faithful’s acquisition of crowns and thrones in apocalyptic literature.
The Gospel of Thomas and Q
Q IS THE NAME given to all the traditions that Luke and Matthew have in common but which are missing from Mark. (Q stands for Quelle, the German word for source.) Some scholars believe that this represents a separate document equal to Mark in importance to the Early Church but now lost in its original form. Given the evidence, Q would have had to be a bare-bones “sayings source.” This would explain how Matthew could put, for example, Jesus’ famous sermon on a mount, while Luke placed the same sermon on a plain.
Many Q enthusiasts were heartened when The Gospel of Thomas was found, because this was a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus with a minimum of setting and narrative. It was, therefore, hailed as the first evidence that a “sayings source” actually existed. Although the parallels between Luke and Matthew can be understood as progressive copying of one manuscript by another under the influence of special traditions or oral influence of one Gospel on another in an intense but short history of its composition, the Q hypothesis is very vibrant today.
Resolving the existence or nature of Q is not critical to the history of the resurrection belief in Christianity.21 What is necessary to study is The Gospel of Thomas itself, which contains very important traditions about resurrection, quite different from the canonical Gospels. The Gospel of Thomas shows definitively that there were early interpreters of resurrection who emphasized the converse of the canonical Gospels-namely, that Jesus’ resurrection is entirely spiritual. The Gospel of Thomas presents us with a different trajectory of the resurrection tradition, like Paul’s in its description of the spiritual nature of the resurrection event but far more extreme in its consequences. It is a second-century document although parts of it may have been written quite a bit earlier.
The most obvious example of spiritual resurrection is to be found in The Gospel of Thomas, where vision and knowledge (gnōsis) of the Lord can be sought and, when found, reveal the spiritual nature of one’s own salvation. Although there are testimonies of its existence, it was first found in its entirety only in the Nag Hammadi corpus, a group of tiny codices discovered in a jar buried in antiquity at Nag Hammadi in Egypt and uncovered by an Egyptian fellaḥ (peasant, pl. fellaḥin) in 1947 while digging in the desert sand. Thirteen miniscule volumes, containing many different tractates, mostly written in Coptic, the last phase of ancient Egyptian and the holy language of the Coptic Christian church, were found within the jar. Though diminutive in physical size, some of the codices (i.e., books rather than scrolls) were quite long and all were jam-packed with writings. They contained much new information about early Egyptian Christianity. Letters in the binding of the covers of these books seem to date from the time period of Pachomius, the founder of Egyptian monasticism (second century). Historically, the group that collected this library were probably the disciples of Pachomius or persons communicating with him, as the letters stiffening the bindings are likely to be the autograph copies. But beyond that, we know less about them than we need to know.
Most of the documents are very strange, seemingly representatives of various stages in the evolution of a heresy we know as “Gnosticism.” The group might not have recognized itself as heretical or even understood the name “Gnostic,” as it is unclear when the term “Gnosticism” came into general usage. Some of the sayings in The Gospel of Thomas also closely resemble sayings of Jesus in the canonical Gospels. Scholars therefore consider it as an alternative version of the “orthodox” tradition.
The strange traditions found in The Gospel of Thomas describe a very spiritual, resurrected body. The strange traditions may explain the use of the disciple Thomas as the doubter in the Gospel of John. This Thomas tradition teaches a rarefied and spiritual Christianity that has little to do with fleshly wounds and literal resurrections. It is no wonder that Thomas became the one who recognized the physical presence of the Savior in the Gospel of John. How better for John to defeat this powerful, Thomasine interpretation of Jesus’ mission, death, and resurrection than by having its author, Thomas, admit that his spiritual position was wrong?22
In The Gospel of Thomas, one sees no such appreciation for physical resurrection. In fact, one sees the other side of the argument:
Jesus said: “If they say to you, ‘Where did you come from?’ say to them, ‘We came from the light,’ (the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established [itself] and became manifest through their image). If they say to you, ‘Is it you?’ say ‘We are its children, and we are the elect of the Living Father.’ If they ask you, ‘What is the sign of your Father in you?’ say to them, ‘It is movement and repose.’” His disciples said to him: “When will the repose of the dead occur? And when will the new cosmos come?” He said to them: “This thing which you expect has come, but you do not recognize it.” (Logia 50-51)
Jesus in The Gospel of Thomas is the heavenly Savior and image of the Father who is not begotten. His resurrection had already happened and so had the resurrection of those who believe in him (Logia 50-51). But Jesus is never described as the messiah of Israel in The Gospel of Thomas. Instead, he is a revealer-savior who utters magnificently puzzling antinomies, paradoxes, and dilemmas. Unlike the parables in the Synoptic Gospels, which a few resemble outwardly, these Logia are genuinely puzzling; their purpose was apparently to demarcate those with gnōsis (knowledge) and, perhaps, those who had been taught or learned how to understand the parables from those who were outside the group and hence were totally puzzled by them.
The Logia seem to function somewhat like Zen koans, whose purpose is to bring the believer beyond the superficial antinomies of the world to greater hidden truths of vision and knowledge. No one Logion revealed the whole Thomasine tradition, but taken together and read together they slowly reveal a mystical whole, like the pieces of the puzzle. The experience of reading this gospel is very much like reading Jewish mystical literature like Sefer Ha-Bahir or The Zohar.23 According to The Gospel of Thomas, then, humans come from the light and are destined to return to it if we but realize our heavenly origins. This interest in light as the source of saving knowledge is found in Philo and was characteristic of late pagan Neoplatonism as well as its stepfather Hermeticism, where light is the first created principle of the universe, synonymous with life, logos, and spirit. We also see similar notions in the Syriac Odes of Solomon.24
These mystical speculations about light can be made understandable in a Jewish context from the Genesis 1 creation account, which was possibly the catalyst that connected all these ideas.25 As translated into Greek, this supernal light, the first light of all creation, which God called into being on the first day without use of stars or moon or sun, was Phōs, a double-entendre in Greek because it can mean either “light” or “man.” Jesus therefore, also firstborn himself, could be equated with the human manifestation of the hidden light and truth in the universe. In other guises, this group of ideas is much like the Prologue to the Gospel of John where the creation is understood as having proceeded from the logos, which was divine in itself. But here, there is a further explicit step: those enlightened by Jesus became Sons of Light themselves. The notion is similar to the terms used by the Qumran community, who thought of themselves as the běnē ’wr, the Sons of Light, and felt that they were pure enough to be a single company with the angels.26
But the document did not retreat into a complete docetism (the doctrine that Jesus only “seemed” to be human). Logion 28 states this: “Jesus said: ‘I took my stand in the midst of the world, and I appeared to them in flesh…’” Yet it is not the fleshly appearance that is critical: “Jesus said, ’When you see the one who was not born of woman, prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one is your Father’” (Logion 15). Jesus showed the way to the spiritual Father.
So there is a deep ambiguity between actuality and the appearance of flesh. The Thomasine traditions parallel Paul in taking the spiritual nature of the resurrection body (sōma pneumatikon) very seriously indeed. Unlike Paul, however, this Gospel does not posit an apocalyptic end nor does it see the necessity of a material and physical resurrection: “This thing which you expect has come but you do not recognize it,” says Logion 51, probably speaking of the resurrection. The theme of lack of recognition is mirrored throughout the work, becoming synonymous with the progress of each believer into more sophisticated Christianity:
His disciples said, “When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?” Jesus said, “When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then [you will see] the Son of the Living One, and you will not be afraid. (Logion 37)
When you see your likeness, you rejoice. But when you see your images which came into being before you, and which neither die nor become manifest, how much you will have to bear! (Logion 84)
Like all Thomasine Logia, they at first seem very strange until they are read in context with the rest of the document; they are meant to be read together and puzzled out. These Logia seem to imply a baptismal ceremony that is symbolic of removing the fleshly aspect of life entirely. The purpose of this removal is to shed one’s body as children shed their clothes before a bath, evidently an image of innocence but also a symbol of rebirth and rejuvenation. The scene of shedding the body is accompanied by a heavenly ascent and preparation for a vision of the Savior, who will reveal Himself at the moment that the individual members of the group are worthy by their purity and discernment.
What social situation would account for this unusual and puzzling document? The community that valued this document was Egyptian, since the language of the document is Coptic, but the original language is likely to have been Greek, so there was a wider audience as well. It has been characterized as “Encratite” (ascetic, Jewish-Christian, and monastic) practically since the document was found. The document itself says its followers are monachai, monks.
April D. deConick has profitably compared the religiosity in The Gospel of Thomas with Jewish mysticism as it advocates and prepares for a spiritual vision of the highest manifestation of God.27 She makes a convincing case that Hermetic, Neoplatonic, and Jewish mystical communities had quite similar spiritual goals. This particular Gospel was valued by a highly ascetic community, probably of cenobitic monks. (They lived apart as hermits but they came together for meals and other rituals.) They were Christians but their Christianity was noticably lacking in Messianism. Their apocalypticism had been vitiated by the strength of the mystic vision that they sought. Why wait for the end of the world when visions give access to the Savior immediately?
They also were determined to do away with any material understanding of Jesus as Savior, viewing his resurrected form as entirely spiritual, essentially as a “very important soul” who ascended to the heaven and beckons to others to follow him (though they did not use that terminology). And their goal was to immortalize their beings by understanding the revelation offered them. They too seemed to feel that sexuality could be transcended in their attainment of divine or angelic status. Their language for attaining divine status was strikingly male-centered:
Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Logion 114)
Presumably the saying was set in this community’s equivalent to the Johannine resurrection story (e.g. John 20). There, Mary did not recognize Jesus at first. Simon Peter sought to have her taken away but Jesus spoke to her and she recognized the Savior after all. Logion 114 seems to have the same incident in mind. Evidently, the community symbolized transcending sexuality as “maleness” while it compared falling victim to sexuality as “femaleness.” Simon Peter was represented as commanding Mary to leave, suggesting that females were not worthy of the [eternal] life, which was the goal of the community. But Jesus replied that he himself will show Mary the way to become male and thus also become a living spirit.
Through their maleness, all will enter the kingdom of heaven. The purpose of the Logion was to include women in the order if they too obeyed the monastic rules eschewing luxury and sexuality, on the model of Mary, who was after all, the first to see. But the language impresses us as so sexually biased as to make the message difficult for us to receive. In point of fact, the message also seems consonant with the angelic life expressed in Luke: Some of the privileged will live as angels while on earth and so become them when they are transformed into their eternal beings.
We must remember the perception of Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis of what angel Christology meant to the Gospel tradition.28 Angelic status was a transcendence of sexuality. Here, in place of angelic life, we have a similar notion expressed with the language of the spirit. This ascetic behavior meant eschewing all sexual life. This career, in turn, also prohibited marriage and childbearing, which were crucial to what it meant to be a “woman” in ancient Greco-Roman society. Thus, ascetic life, meant an autonomous life, otherwise only available to men. If this is the type of asceticism represented in The Gospel of Thomas, and the ascetic behavior is a propaedeutic to receiving revelation through contemplation, then the text allows for women to access the means of spiritual enlightenment in ways that are not easily available elsewhere in society.29 It just picks a way that seems strange to us to express it.
Another way in which Mary could become “male” was through a return to the Platonic myth of the andgrogyne. April D. deConick writes, “Since Eve was taken from Adam’s side, so she must reenter him and become “male” in order to return to the prelapsarian state of Adam before the gender division.30 Active creation as a prerequisite for salvation must be understood as a mandatory procedure while the disciple is still on earth. Jesus said, “During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it alive” (Logion 11). The substitution must come before bodily death. The fact that the disciples can turn dead matter into living substance indicates that a transformation from death to life is possible on the earthly level. “Jesus said, ‘When you make the two one, you will become children of humanity, and then you say, “Mountain, move from here!’ it will move” (Logion 106). In this version of Jesus’ exploits, Jesus was not speaking of events to come in an eschatological future but stressing the disciples ability to transform the present miraculously by their meditation and faith.31
This “return” to the androgynous figure of Genesis is also characteristic of Valentinian Gnosticism and, to a lesser extent, to Jewish mysticism. Valentinian Gnostics and mystics believed that the very existence of two distinct and opposed sexes was caused by a tragic and unnecessary division for which humanity had suffered ever since.32 This notion was evident early in the Thomasine tradition: “When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?” (Logion 11:3). The Valentinians as well believed that a redeemed person “radiated a vast serenity in which sexual desire had been swallowed up with all other signs of inner division.”33 The Gnostics believed that sexual temptation was a symbol of more deep-seated societal ills, and therefore the transcendence of desire was a “resurrection” of the self.34 Many of Jesus’ sayings in The Gospel of Thomas can be associated with encratism, an ascetic lifestyle characterized by abstinence, dietary restrictions, and voluntary poverty.
Finally, Mary’s transformation can be interpreted as a movement from the physical and earthly to a realm that is spiritual and heavenly. The female represented the natural, material world, which must be thrown off and transformed into the male spirit who is transcendent and active. Elizabeth Castelli argues: “For progress is indeed nothing else than the giving up of the female by changing into the male, since the female is material, passive corporeal, and sense-perceptible, while the male is active, rational, incorporeal, and more akin to mind and thought.35
The belief in a progressive transformation into the male spirit is reminiscent of Neoplatonic notions of the order of the universe in which it is divided into a hierarchy of three levels of divine being: the One, the Divine Mind, and the Soul, under which resided the material world. In the Enneads, Plotinus suggested that in rising from the Divine Mind to the One, we leave behind the last shreds of division and separation, even the duality between the knower and the known. We do not see the One, nor even know it, but are made One with it.36 Notions of this kind can be found throughout The Gospel of Thomas:
When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer, and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female …then you will enter [the kingdom.] (Logion 22:4-6)
The otherness of all that was not pure spirit would be healed. The female would be swallowed up in the male and would become male.
Wayne Meeks claims that the unification of opposites served in early Christianity as a prime symbol of salvation.37 This notion is exemplified by a passage from The Gospel of Philip when read with Logion 18 of the The Gospel of Thomas about the necessary return to the beginning:
When Eve was in Adam, there was no death; but when she was separated from him, death came into being. Again if [she] go in, and take [her] to himself, death will be no longer. (G. Philip 166:22-26)
Have you discovered the beginning, then, that you are seeking after the end? For where the beginning is, the end will be. Blessed is the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and not taste death. (Logion 18).
This comparison further emphasizes Jorunn Buckley’s argument for the necessary return to Eden.38 The “secret knowledge” necessary for eternal life can be intepreted as gaining self-knowledge through unification. Meeks explains, “The emphasis on salvation by self-knowledge suggests that the terms “male and female” are used metaphorically in the Thomas sayings to represent aspects of the individual personality.39 Whether the dichotomy is taken literally or metaphorically, The Gospel of Thomas positions the female in the lowest initiatory stage. The female needs to be abolished in the male before the transformation into the spirit can occur.40 A woman is twice removed from God, therefore making it more difficult, albeit possible, for women to gain salvation. In this text, Christ is not only seen as the revealer and teacher of salvific knowledge but also functions as a father and spouse for female followers.41 Although The Gospel of Thomas maintains the patriarchal hierarchy, with the help of Jesus as their teacher or spouse, women do have the opportunity to transcend the material world and gain salvation through spiritual exercises leading to the gnōsis or saving knowledge.
The apocalyptic ending, the characteristic that Paul and the Gospels have in common, is entirely missing. In its place is a spirit mysticism, which does not use the term “soul” but instead uses Jewish mystical terms like “image” and “form” and “shape,” emphasizing that our human shape is a reflection of the divine, as in Genesis 1:26 and other places in the Bible. This seems as close as the resurrection tradition of Christianity can come to the Greek notion of the immortal soul without actually stating it. Jesus’ resurrection body can be seen as merely one more spirit. Indeed, Greek dualism of soul and body deny the reality of fleshly resurrection, which by now was firmly ensconced in the canonical Gospel tradition.
On the other hand, The Gospel of Thomas includes within in it something that is hard to find in Greek philosophical notions of a soul-a myriad of Jewish and Christian rituals, including baptism, eucharist, and meditation-that served as a technique for receiving religious visions and from which the monastics received the gnōsis that transforms them into immortal beings. The most famous logion is almost a command to enter psychoanalysis:
Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you. (Logion 70)
We can see that this Logion, in context, is not exactly about the necessity of psychotherapy. It was a challenge to search for the truth in meditation. Those who found recognition within also recognized that they were the elect. Logion 70 is just as much about the group that recognized the truths contained in these arcane sayings-and only that group-because the “elect,” the maskilim, those who knew of the Daniel 12 prophecy. It was those who will become the angels and the stars. And this means that the community that produced the Gospel of Thomas had an entirely different understanding of how to missionize the Gospel. There was no apostolic tradition; there was no physical presence; there was no empty tomb and no polemic of doubt with the Jews. Only those who really experienced Jesus in the spirit were converted. Instead of the physicality of the apostolic tradition, we had the ascetic and mystical exercises of a group of monks. The only goal of the Logia was to lead the mystical adept to the visionary presence of the Christ, which could be stimulated by studying and meditating on these gnomic and puzzling phrases of Jesus.
The notion of faith (which is critical to both the Gospels and Paul) has disappeared, and in its place gnōsis, the vision, and subsequent transformation became paramount. For Paul, faith meant confidence that his visions would come true. For the Gospels, faith meant trust in the transmission of the canonical tradition through the apostles. Here, faith disappears and is replaced by gnōsis (saving knowledge), attained by the mystic through visions. It is as if Paul’s visionary Christianity, instead of being the mark of a special prophet, had become the explicit goal of all ascetics.42 The spiritual process must be completed in this life: “Jesus said, ‘Look for the Living One while you are alive, lest you die and then seek to see him and you will be unable to see (him)’” (Logion 59).
These early Christians set about to find the legitimate authority to become the successors to Jesus-namely, the authority of gnōsis. We can contrast their spiritual authority with the other Christian understandings of authority. Paul suggested that the principle of authority was faith, but his understanding of faith in Christ meant faith that his vision was the key for understanding the meaning of Christ’s resurrection. The Synoptic Gospels said, to the contrary, faith is primarily the acceptance of the authority and teachings of those of us who learned from those who learned at the feet of Jesus. It is a concrete, fleshly chain of tradition that was passed from teacher to pupil.
The community of The Gospel of Thomas may have started from the same assumptions as Paul’s writing, but took their interpretation to the opposite extreme. Or they may have started from another, independent Thomasine interpretation of Christianity. We do not know. But we know what they thought: Only those who actually see the vision of the Savior will be transformed. It is not faith but the knowledge (gnōsis) of God found in visions that brings salvation. It is to them that the true status of angels, stars, and elect is given. Like the intellectuals of a Greek philosophical school, they stressed the individual nature of salvation, the mind must figure it out for itself, with the help of the meditations that Jesus left. And the nature of the community appeared to have been very loose, a group of solitary, hermits who may have assembled only for special meals or rituals, and who will later be called cenobitic monks.
The nature of the transformed body of Christ and the location of that body on earth was a guide to the perfection of humanity. But it was, secondly, an argument that those who counted themselves the followers of Christ had no need to rule others; they knew that they shall rise to the heavens and become stars. The Synoptic Gospels, on the other hand, stress a tightly knit community whose salvation was based on accepting the legitimate apostolic authority of those who were physically taught by the master. They preached bodily resurrection and eschewed spiritual immortality of the soul. Both the Synoptic Gospels and The Gospel of Thomas seem to build on the revelation that Paul left. But they took it in completely different directions and they were each involved with a very different polemic with Paul.43 Paul may not have been the earliest or most important Christian. But, in retrospect, his Christianity seems to have been the most controversial one. What actually happened at Easter is still an historical mystery as well as a mystery of faith. The one sure thing is that each Gospel interpreted the resurrection in a way consistent with its view of ultimate felicity and the rites necessary to achieve it.