Question:
Please clear up for me the discussion below I found on line in which the writer tries to argue that the resurrection of Christ was invented by the later Christians for religions reasons:
Christian apologists and conservative scholars have tried to argue that, while there was a belief in a coming general resurrection, the idea of a individual rising from the dead as a pre-figurement of this was unknown and would have been unthinkable to Jews in this period. Therefore the idea that the concept of Jesus’ resurrection arose out of this expectation is invalid. The conservative scholar N.T. Wright argues:
By Jesus’s day many Jews had come to hope that some day in the future there would be a bodily resurrection of all the righteous, when God renewed the entire world and removed all suffering and death. The resurrection, however, was merely one part of the complete renewal of the whole world, according to Jewish teaching. The idea of an individual being resurrected, in the middle of history, while the rest of the world continued on burdened by sickness, decay, and death, was inconceivable.
This is a very strange thing for Wright to claim, since the gospel themselves depict several such resurrections – the raising of the daughter of Jarius (Mark 5:21-43), that of the young man from Nain (Luke 7:11-17) and that of Lazarus (John 11:1-44) – as pre-figuring the coming general resurrection when God reasserts his kingship.
Furthermore, the gospels also depict people believing that John the Baptist rose from the dead after his execution and even that Jesus was the risen John (see Mark 6:14 and Mark 8:27-28). This makes sense, since it is clear that John the Baptist’s sect continued long after his death – in Acts 19:1-3 Paul meets people in Ephesus in Greece who had been baptised by followers of John. The idea that John had risen from the dead came from the belief in the coming general resurrection. Obviously the concept of a prophet rising from the dead as a pre-figurement of the coming kingdom of God was very much in the air when Jesus was executed.
So just as the idea of a great man dying and being taken up into the heavens and later appearing to his followers was current in the Greco-Roman world, the idea of resurrection was a hot topic in the Jewish world. As was the idea of a individual rising from the dead as a pre-figurement of the imminent coming general resurrection. With the stories of the resurrection of Jesus, we see all these ideas coming together.
Response:
I believe that NT Wright; has hit the nail on the head, as they say. This is no surprise to me, because Wright is one of the most brilliant scholars we have today! The problem is that the author of this article does not understand what Wright is saying. It is his misunderstanding which explains the problem. Here is what Wright is saying. He is saying that among the Jews by the first century, there was a common, though not general understanding that there would be a final resurrection at the end of time. This belief was based largely on the statement in Daniel 12:2-4, which clearly states that at the end of time there will be a final resurrection of all people, and then a judgment, followed by an eternal consequence. This is what many of the Jew believed. Why? Because it was in the Bible. The idea did not come from some sort of evolution of Jewish thinking. It came from the Scripture. It was the Scripture which set off the evolution of thinking about end-times.
What NT Wright is saying is that many–probably a majority–of the Jews believed in a final resurrection and coming of God’s kingdom. What they did not expect, however, was for anyone to be resurrected for eternity before the end time. The confusion is this. This author is confusing a resuscitation with a resurrection. We know that Jarius’ daughter was raised from the dead, as was Lazarus. Elijah also performed a raising from the dead as well. But this raising was only a temporary thing. It was not a resurrection to eternal life. In fact, the Shunammite woman’s son died later, as did Jarius’ daughter and as did Lazarus. The idea of a raising from the dead was present in Judaism, as perhaps it may have been in other cultures as well. But what the Jews knew nothing of was a person being resurrected to eternal life during their times and before the final resurrection of all people. What happened to Jesus is truly unique to Judaism, and it is truly unexpected. This is what NT Wright said, and it is true! But… this author simply misunderstands the Jews of the first century and he misunderstands NT Wright. Whether he does this on purpose, or whether it is because he is not well-educated on the topic, I will let you decide, but NT Wright is 100% accurate in his assessment of the fact that the Jews did not expect anyone to be resurrected to eternal life during the time of Jesus’ ministry.
The author states that at the time of Jesus the idea of being raised from the dead was a current “hot theological topic.” He is probably exaggerating here, but he is is correct that the Jews were aware of the possibility of a miraculous resuscitation–of a raising from the dead, but that this raising, if it would happen, would later be followed by death. It had nothing to do with what happened with Jesus. What happened with Jesus was WAY different than what happened to Lazarus and Jarius’ daughter. The author seems to simply not get this distinction. The author also mentions that the Sadducees, unlike the Pharisees, denied in total the idea of a final resurrection. This statement is correct. The principal reason for this is that they only used the first five books, and did not recognize Daniel as canonical. But the Sadducees were wrong, as Jesus and Paul pointed out.
Bottom line, the problem is a misunderstanding of both the Bible and NT Wright on the part of this author.
John Oakes
