Christianity
The Resurrection Of Jesus Christ
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, November 15, 2001
The Resurrection
The peculiar character of the gospel narratives is that the farther a writer is removed from the events, the more he knows. Paul in about 50 AD knows very little, Mark in about 65 AD a little more than Paul, Matthew and Luke in about 95 AD still more, and John in about 125 AD knows most of all, except the birth narratives. This is a characteristic of the growth of myth, not history. With the passage of time historical details disappear, but in the first hundred years of Christianity they grew.
The accounts of the resurrection in the four gospels, as S H Hooke has pointed out in Middle Eastern Mythology, are decorated with mythical elements, but Mark has no account of any appearances of Jesus, and the mythical element is least in this gospel. It supports the idea that Mark is the earliest and least elaborated gospel. All that Mark relates concerning the resurrection of Jesus is that the women came early on the morning of the first day of the week to the grave, found the stone rolled away and the grave empty. They saw a young man in a white robe sitting by the grave who told them that Jesus was not there but was risen, and gave them a message to deliver to the disciples to the effect that Jesus would meet them in Galilee as he had told them at the Last Supper.
Mythology enters the passion narratives of Jesus from such scriptures as Psalms 22 and Isaiah 3, where the sufferings of the godly Israelite, and of the Servant of Yehouah, prefigure the sufferings of Jesus during his passion. The suffering Servant of Yehouah of Deutero-Isaiah provides the pattern of Jesus’s destiny. The story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:27-35) shows the early Church understood this Isaiah passage as referring to Jesus.
Supernatural Events
All the synoptic gospels record that at the moment of Jesus’s death the veil of the Temple was rent from top to bottom by supernatural agency. Few people can persuade themselves this is historical. Even so eminent a New Testament scholar as Dr C H Dodd said, “The rending of the veil I take to be purely symbolical.” The three Synoptic gospels also relate that immediately before the death of Jesus there was darkness over the whole land for three hours. Luke adds, according to the best manuscripts, that the darkness was due to an eclipse of the sun (Lk 23:44), but, as Origen pointed out long ago, an eclipse of the sun is not possible at full moon. The darkness, like the rending of the veil, is symbolical.
Matthew is richest in mythical elements. Besides these two incidents, he says rocks were rent by an earthquake, the graves were opened, and many bodies of sleeping saints arose and came into “the holy city” (Jerusalem), and appeared to many “after his resurrection.” Matthew is trying to say that the general resurrection of Hosea had begun. Jesus was the first but already other righteous men were being resurrected. He implies that these resurrected saints were walking around Jerusalem for the weekend, and indeed ought to be still alive, unless they also ascended to join the hosts of heaven. Why did none of the disciples meet them? If they remained alive, why are they not the principle apostles, able to confirm in person the truth of the resurrection to this day? If they all ascended to heaven why did no one report on this mass ascension which must have been more remarkable than Jesus’s own?
The Guard at the Tomb
None of the gospel accounts of the resurrection were written by any eyewitnesses to the event, as Christians often claim, and most other references to it were by Paul, who admitted he did not see it either. The evangelists did not see Christ rise from the tomb, nor did they positively claim to have got it from anybody who did see it. The only witnesses who might have seen what happened were the guards at the tomb in Matthew, either Roman soldiers or Temple Guards, and they were so unimpressed that they took a bribe not to say anything about it. They ought to have been the chief apostles. This appears only in Matthew and refutes skepticism that Matthew admits was being expressed even at the time he wrote (Mt 28:15)! How could Mark or Luke have missed this out, if it was true? It was invented to answer the doubters.
The Pharisees, according to Matthew, suspected the Nazarenes of plotting to steal the corpse to make it seem as though he had arisen. The most senior Jews, the supposed enemies of Jesus, had heard and understood that Jesus claimed he would be resurrected though the disciples had misunderstood him to a man, and refused to believe it even when it happened. To forestall the presumed plot, they demanded from Pilate a guard. Pilate’s reply, “Ye have a guard,” is ambiguous, but seems to be a refusal, saying they should use their own guard, the Temple Guard. Later, though, the implication is the guards are Roman soldiers (Mt 28:14) subject to the governor. Yet when they returned, they reported first to the priests, implying they were Temple Guards.
Did the guards check the tomb before they put a seal on the closed tomb (Mt 27:66)? All of this happened on the sabbath day when the body had been in the tomb since Friday afternoon. For the whole of Friday night, the body was unguarded, even if it was ever in the tomb. Joseph of Arimathea had charge of the body and sealed the tomb himself (Mt 27:57-60). The two women are then mentioned in a floating sentence that could have been simply interpolated to answer the criticism that the women got the wrong tomb. The corpse need not have been in the tomb when the sentries were put on duty.
If the corpse was truly resurrected in the presence of the guards, they must have seen what happened and have become the only real eyewitnesses to the resurrection. Evidently no guards came forward to the first Christians as witnesses to it. No guards came forward, though they had just seen the most astonishing act ever to happen in the world and had evidently still not believed! How then are we who are denied such evidence to believe? Matthew has to explain his blunder. He wanted guards in the story to prove that the corpse was not simply stolen but then has to explain why they did not come forward as the most compelling witnesses. So he tells us they were bribed not to tell the truth but to say that disciples had stolen the corpse.
Matthew is getting really tangled up here. There is no way Roman soldiers could have been bribed to say Christ’s body was stolen away by his disciples. If they had said it they would have been accused immediately of treachery to Rome in allowing it. Matthew hopes to avoid this by saying the priests would stand up for them, if the governor found out, but the priests would have had no say in such a flagrant dereliction of duty. They were supposed to be on guard to prevent the theft of the body. They failed! Matthew realizes this and gets more tangled up by having the guards make the excuse they were asleep! Can you imagine what any military power would do to soldiers who admitted being asleep while on duty? And if now they were saying they were asleep, how could they have served to prove that the disciples did not steal the body?
If they were Temple Guards, it is more plausible, the concern about the governor being merely that he would have had responsibility for the corpse of a rebel, but it still would not have served Matthew’s purpose. Matthew has worked himself into a total mess. If there was a guard and they later admitted they had seen disciples stealing the corpse, then they had not been assigned specifically to guard the tomb. Most likely there was no guard, since no other gospel mentions it. In some of the events he describes, Matthew assumes the omniscience of a fiction writer, narrating what he could not have known. He reports private discussions between priests and Pilate (Mt 27:62-65), and the guards (Mt 28.11-15), the latter involving bribery and so presumably secret! Matthew is answering critics with fictional answers.
The Empty Tomb
In Mark 16:1, the women are listed again after having been listed in the previous verse—an insertion. The two Marys and Salome (or Mary Magdalene alone, according to John) visit the tomb early on the Sunday morning the day after the sabbath ostensibly to wash and prepare the body. Yet, this same gospel implies (Mk 15:46), and John confirms, that Joseph of Arimathea had already prepared the body for burial. In Judaea, in April, it seems unlikely that the women would really be going to anoint a body that might have already started to decompose in the hot climate. Friends and family might wish to visit a tomb for a few days after burial to grieve but surely not to anoint the corpse.
If that was their purpose, they could have gone on the previous night after the stars came out when the sabbath was over, and indeed it is strange that someone so revered as Jesus should have unnecessarily been left another twelve hours if they really wanted to embalm the body. Unless, as is suspected, the Essenes measured time from dawn to dawn, unlike the Pharisees, in which case this is more proof that the Nazarenes were Essenes. For what it is worth, John tells us the corpse had already been embalmed by Joseph and Nicodemus (Jn 19:39-40), and they would have had enough time to do it on Friday night if they too were Essenes and measured days from dawn and not dusk.
The women knew the tomb was closed with a stone (Mk 15:47) which they could not move, but they took no man with them, and they were wondering (Mk 16:3) how they could move it, when they found the stone had been rolled away and the tomb was empty. A young man (or two men) in pure white garments tells them that Jesus is risen and has gone ahead to Galilee as he promised. The direct speech is all made up by Mark. It is not in the language of tradition but in Mark’s language. Mark wishes to assure the reader that the women had seen the very place where Jesus had been laid. The women fled trembling and amazed and, at this point, the earliest gospel ends (ignoring the final twelve verses which were added later).
The white robe and youth are conventional characteristics of an angel, but the significance of the pure white garments is not that these men are “angels” of God but that they are “messengers” of the Essenes. Jesus the Nasi had an important position in the Essene order. He alone had not misread the signs of the times but the whole order had. The readings and prophecies had been wrong but Jesus had carried out his duties as John the Baptist had before him, and had suffered for it. His body was removed so that he could be given a proper burial in a place approved by the community. The messengers from the sect give orders to the disciples that they were to escape to Galilee—out of Roman jurisdiction.
According to the other gospels, immediately after the crucifixion, the disciples had despaired and were incredulous to hear that the tomb was empty. This proves that Jesus cannot have taught his disciples to expect his bodily resurrection on the third day, as the gospels maintain since otherwise they would have been expecting Jesus to rise, would not have despaired at his death and would have rejoiced to hear of the empty tomb. The five occasions Jesus spoke of his death and resurrection in the gospel stories are interpolations based on hindsight.
The church’s attempt at accounting for the inconsistency of the apostles’ behaviour was to accuse them of stupidity. They were not stupid. If they were, Jesus must have been stupid to have chosen them. It is interesting to realize how the early church got away with labelling the Jewish followers of Jesus as stupid. Once it is appreciated that Jesus was an Essene sent to recruit the wayward children of Israel in the last days, it is obvious. Jesus went out to recruit those whom the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to as the “simple of Ephraim.” His converts were therefore “the simple!” Once the church had escaped into the gentile world, it was a short and easy progression from being called “the simple” to being simple. That suited the gentile leaders of the gentile church just fine—Jesus was a god, but his simple followers thought he was only a king.
Since the Nazarene leaders, at least, were not simple, if they really did not understand when Jesus told them what to expect, then his prophecies must have been far more obscure than they are in the New Testament—or they never occurred! The plausible explanation, since the disciples were completely surprised by the news of the empty tomb, was that Jesus had made no prophecies about his personal resurrection. Their behaviour was therefore perfectly understandable. Their leader was dead, their rebellion had failed, God had not intervened—they despaired. Then someone had the temerity to steal the corpse!
According to the fictitious final twelve verses added to Mark, it is Mary Magdalene who first sees the risen Jesus. As if to provide an explanation, the author immediately tells us that Jesus had cast seven devils from her. The writer of these late verses was not likely to have been using Nazarene convention and must have understood devils to signify madness, not opposition or apostasy. Both Matthew 12:43-45 and Luke 11:24-26 using Nazarene code speak of unclean spirits, having been driven out, returning to their host accompanied by seven other, even more wicked spirits. They were saying that some converts were utter doubters who had to be repeatedly reassured. But it seems Mary Magdalen was unreliable and unstable—she was badly neurotic. Still, if Jesus had made numerous prophecies of his resurrection, the disciples should have received her news cautiously perhaps, but ready to accept it with joy. He had done no such thing and, not surprisingly, the neurotic woman was ignored.
Eyewitness Testimony
Besides the physical impossibility of resurrection, the four gospels are at such odds, their testimony cannot be accepted as credible. They disagree about the time of its discovery, the persons who made the discovery, what took place at the sepulchre, what Peter saw and did there, and what occurred afterward relating to it.
The resurrection rests upon the flimsiest of evidence. Though Christians talk about eyewitness testimony, scholars know that none of the gospel accounts of the resurrection were written by an eyewitness to the event. The gospels only relate hearsay accounts of alleged appearances of the man who was dead but arose, and the other New Testament citations of it were by the apostle Paul, who had not seen it either.
The gospel writers say that these witnesses said they had seen the risen Jesus. Christians like to think of these witnesses as perfectly holy people even though the gospels almost go out of their way to show that they were far from perfect, and indeed that Jesus was trying to save sinners and publicans. Why then will they not let go of their illusion of saintliness and consider that, once Jesus had died, they all lied to promote their apparently lost cause in Jesus? Or why did they never considered the possibility that Jesus was not dead at all, and had been whisked away by Joseph of Arimathea to a safe place? Or why could they not have been so distressed by the unacceptable outcome that they rationalized the defeat, in fact, into a victory, in theory.
Any of these explanations would be preferable to the idea that God was doing a magical trick to impress gullible believers. Why should rational people accept the incredible Christian story of the resurrection and reject other incredible claims? Even Christians, who are not only ready to believe this fabulous myth but are ready to foist it on to others, always reject other people’s miracles. They are utterly incapable of realizing that their own fantastic claims have no more validity than the ones they discard.
The gospels tell us with tiresome regularity that Jesus forewarned his disciples about his forthcoming death and resurrection. If he did, they were expecting it. Not so, say Christians, they were shocked and in despair when they realised the body had gone. The contradiction between the repeated warnings given by the Saviour and the failure of his disciples to hear them, Christians explain by the total incomprehension of the disciples.
Those who First Visited the Sepulchre
As to the time of the first visits to the tomb, Matthew (Mt 28:1) tells us that it was late on the sabbath, as it began to dawn. Mark (Mk 16:1-2) says the sabbath was past, it was early on the first day of the week and the sun was rising. Luke says it was the first day of the week at early dawn (Lk 24:1). John 20:1 declares it was the first day of the week but yet dark. So it was simultaneously dark, just before dawn, and after dawn when the sun was rising.
More important is how the expressions of time are interpreted. Matthew phrases the time as if the sabbath ended at dawn, and Mark implies something similar, if not so clearly. Luke’s expression could apply to either a dusk-to-dusk day or a dawn-to-dawn one. Only John’s suits only the traditional Pharisaic day of evening to evening. If it is true that the Essenes used a solar calendar with days measured from dawn to dawn, these simple expressions of the synoptic gospels support the idea that the Nazarenes were Essenes.
Regarding who first visited the sepulchre, Matthew says it was Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James. They were there just to see the sepulchre. Mark says it was Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, and they had spices for anointing. Luke says it was Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and other women who had been with them in Galilee. They had spices even though Joseph seems again to have prepared the body. John is definite that Mary Magdalene went alone (Jn 20:1-2), and mentions no reason why she was there, because Nicodemus and Joseph had anointed the body with a hundredweight(!) of myrrh and aloes (Jn 19:39-40). So Mary Magdalene does not take spices. Were there two women, a gaggle of more than four women, or just one woman? No reasonable person could accept such contradictory evidence. Christians accept it for one reason only—they think it will give them eternal life after death!
Events at the tomb
Matthew testifies that the angel of the Lord descended in full view, like lightning, clothed as white as snow, and accompanied by an earthquake. At the sight of him, the keepers shake and become like dead men. The angel rolled away the stone and sat on it at the door of the sepulchre, telling the women their Lord was risen (Mt 28:1-8). In Mark (Mk 16:4) and Luke (Lk 24:4), the stone had already been rolled away. Luke avers that two men were there, not outside, but inside, and not sitting, but standing, and there was no sign of an angel. Mark says only one man was there, and he was sitting.
In John, Mary finds the tomb empty, and no angel was there to explain why, so she runs to tell Peter, not knowing about any resurrection. Mary thought the body of Jesus had been stolen from the tomb! Mary is not shown as joyful but as a distraught woman who yet had no idea that Jesus had risen from the dead. When she found the disciples, she said:
They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we know not where they have laid him.Jn 20:2
John did not know of any discussions Mary had had with angels or of any assurances to her from angels that Jesus had been resurrected. Peter and the Beloved Disciple run to the tomb to verify her story. They still are unaware (Jn 20:9) of the scripture that “he must rise again from the dead.” They then depart. Mary is suddenly at the tomb, so some time must have passed for her to follow the sprinting Peter and John(?), and she sees in the tomb two angels in white who ask why she is crying. They do not say Jesus has risen. She still thought that the corpse of Jesus had been stolen. Replying to the angels she met inside the tomb, she said:
Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.Jn 20:13
She turns and Jesus himself appears saying she must tell the disciples he has risen. It looks like another independent element of tradition. Matthew 29:9-10 has a similar separate appearance adapted to include or reflected in Mark 16:7, the message to the disciples, in which Jesus appears directly to the women to tell them he had arisen, and gave them the message.
All of this repetition of the word, “risen,” looks as if it might reflect the underlying word “Nasi,” which we surmise was Jesus’s Essene title. A Nasi is one who is raised up and is therefore a leader or a prince. The Essenes messengers could have been referring to the Nasi, a title the Nazarenes, in the hindsight of the empty tomb, misunderstood literally to mean “raised up”—resurrected! Unfortunately, here is one of those mistranslations that the biblicists use often to rewrite the bible how they like it. “egeiro”, actually means to “arouse” or “awaken.” This was the word that Matthew used when Jesus was asleep in the boat on the stormy lake:
And his disciples came to him, and awoke (“egeiro”) him, saying, Lord, save us: we perish.Mt 8:25
The actual word meaning “to arise” is “anistemi”, and is what should be used in reference to resurrection, but “egeiro” is the word that Paul used (1 Cor 15:4,12) in speaking of Christ’s arising—his awakening. Paul makes the distinction clear:
Awake (“egeiro”), thou that sleepest and arise (“anistemi”) from the dead.Eph 5:14
Paul used “egeiro”, uniformly translated as “raised”, eleven other times in 1 Corinthians 15:15-52, when he spoke about the apostles being false witnesses if the dead are not “raised”, faith being dead if the dead are not “raised”, and seed and bodies being sown in corruption but “raised” in incorruption.
Matthew, Luke, and John record that Jesus was resurrected—“they clasped his feet” (Mt 28:9).
Touch me and see, a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have them.Lk 24:39
Put your fingers here, see my hands.Jn 20:27
These gospels also use “egeiro”, just as Paul did. It should be translated properly as “awakened” as it was intended.
He is not here, he has risen (egeiro).Mt 28:6-7
Come and see the place where he lay. He has risen (egeiro) from the dead.
He is not here, he has risen (egeiro).Lk 24:6
He was raised (egeiro) from the dead.Jn 21:14
All are “awakened” not “risen.” In all of this, Paul and the gospel authors seem to be speaking like an Essene in that they did not believe that death was final death, but akin to a sleeping state. The final or second death was reserved for the wicked. Thus people were awakened from the first death to be judged, but only the righteous would resume life in an incorruptible body.
The message to the disciples
Mark says it was a young man inside, not an angel outside the sepulchre who sent the message to meet Jesus in Galilee. The women fled in fear and told no one (Mk 16:6-7). Matthew says his angel uttered the same message to the disciples (Mt 28:5-7). The women ran from the grave with fear and great joy to bring the news to the disciples. Luke omits the message about Galilee, but the two men remind the women of what Jesus had said in Galilee concerning his rising (Lk 24:5-7). The apostles refuse to believe the women except Peter, who is normally as thick as a plank. Matthew supplies the Galilee appearance to confirm the message, and gives the apostles their instructions to convert the world.
Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.Mt 28:19
Jesus had earlier given his disciples exactly the opposite instructions:
Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.Mt 10:5-7
Until this point, Jesus had never taught any blatantly Trinitarian doctrine of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Even Christian scholars admit that this ending has been flagrantly tacked on to Matthew in the fourth century. Its style shows it is not Nazarene tradition.
Accepting that the being at the tomb was a man rather than an angel, why does no one ever suspect him of stealing the corpse, presumably in conspiracy with others, thus rationally explaining the empty tomb? Is it perhaps why the man became an angel?
Peter’s visit to the tomb
Luke (Lk 24:12) says he ran there but did not go into the sepulchre, only stooping down and looking in to see only linen cloths. John says Peter and another disciple ran to the tomb, the other getting there first, but Peter did enter. It was the disciple who went with him who stooped down. They saw the linen cloths and a napkin that had covered Jesus’s head rolled up.
Luke 24:12 looks like an interpolation based on John. Three expressions unique in Luke and Acts occur in this one verse, expressions that appear in John 20:5 and 10. An historic present, which Luke dislikes so much that he changes it almost every time it occurs in Mark, who was fond of it for its sense of immediacy, suddenly pops up here. Modern translations commonly mistranslate it because otherwise, among Luke’s past tenses, it glares out as an oddity. Further proof that this has been added to harmonize the gospels is that it is missing from Codex Bezae and other important manuscripts. Indeed Codex Bezae has several important verses missing that would hardly have been deliberately omitted.
Disciples first seeing Christ
Matthew says that when Christ’s disciples first met him after the resurrection, they worshipped him, and held him by the feet (Mt 28:9). In total contradiction, John says he did not allow even Mary to touch him because he had not yet ascended. But he allows the skeptical Thomas, not only to touch him but thrust his hand into his side. Thomas needed this proof positive that his own twin had indeed been resurrected, yet modern day sceptics, 2000 years and 10,000 miles away are told to believe on pain of eternal torture. Why are we denied the same proof? And why do we not have today, Thomas’s own account of this important proof and how it affected his life?
John tells us Mary first saw Christ, after his resurrection, at the tomb. Matthew says it was on her way home she first saw him. Luke (Lk 24:36) says that Jesus, unrecognized, accompanies two disciples on their way to Emmaus, and reveals himself to them in the breaking of bread. They at once return to Jerusalem to bring the news to the disciples, and find them gathered together debating the report that Jesus was risen and had appeared to Peter, though no account of this appearance is given in any of the gospels. It is an obvious interpolation to puff Peter, doubtless added by the Roman Church which claimed Peter as its first Pope. When Christ appeared to his disciples, they were frightened, supposing him to be a ghost.
Before disappearing, Jesus tells them not to leave Jerusalem, so they boldly praised God openly in the temple, though Jesus in the other synoptics was keen that they left the city to meet him in Galiliee. They were not to leave Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high (Lk 24:48-49), but this power from on high did not come to them until fifty days later (Acts 2:1-4), longer than the forty days Jesus was on earth after his resurrection (Acts 1:3). The disciples cannot therefore have met Jesus on a mountain in Galilee as Matthew claimed, unless they disobeyed Jesus’s commands and left the city. Peter and another disciple cannot have run to the tomb, looked inside, returned home (Lk 24:12; Jn 20:3-9) then travelled from Jerusalem to Galilee and back to meet Jesus on the same day, even supposing they did it before they were told to stay in the city. Besides this, when the disciples from Emmaus found the apostles gathered in Jerusalem on the night of the resurrection, the disciples told them (Lk 24:34), “The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon,” and Simon only, even though they would have been able to say all the apostles on a mountain in Galilee had it miraculously happened—a miracle worth noting.
If Matthew was right about an appearance of the risen Jesus on a mountain in Galilee, then Luke was wrong about his appearance in Jerusalem on the night of the resurrection when he told the disciples not to leave the city. If Luke was right, Matthew was wrong. No one knows who was right and who was wrong, or whether both were wrong. Christians who are not fundamentalists will say it does not matter, though a rule of evidence telling the juror that testimony found to be false in one matter has no basis for reliablility in others—Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus—destroys any confidence in anything the gospels say. That is why fundamentalists maintain the bible is wrong in nothing despite its plain inconsistencies.
John says they were glad, and agrees with Luke against Mark and Matthew, that Jesus did appear to the disciples in Jerusalem, indeed twice, and he passed on the Holy Ghost to them by breathing on them (Jn 20:22) though Luke had to arrange the Holy Ghost to descend on them in flames at Pentecost. Matthew says the disciples were all present on this occasion. John says Thomas was not there. Which must we believe? John knows of no rendezvous on a mountain in Galilee arranged by the risen Jesus, but, they then go to Galilee nevertheless to resume their jobs as fishermen even though they now had the powers of the Holy Ghost!
Secrecy
If the reason why Christ rose from the dead was to convince the world he had come to save them, why was it all done in secret? Why was the risen Christ seen only by a few credulous and interested disciples? If such an astonishing and miraculous event did occur, why does not one of the numerous contemporary writers of those times make any allusion to it? Pliny, Tacitus and Josephus, who detail events minutely, not only of those times, but of that very country, do not say a word about such a remarkable occurrence. Why did they find none of the soldiers Matthew spoke about? Even if the soldiers were bribed not to say anything, can you imagine they would have kept quiet among their friends, or kept their astonishing secret for the rest of their lives? Even Christian sects of the time, like the Corinthians and Carpocratians, were not convinced. Jesus’s own chosen followers were chided for their unbelief in the resurrection. The credibility of the story has to be in question to anyone but the most gullible.
The obvious reason for secrecy was that they had rebelled against Rome and were wanted men. That is why it made sense to get away to Galilee, outside of the immediately jurisdiction of the governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilate. If, as some suggest, Jesus survived the crucifixion he could hardly have been making appearances all over the place within days. He had been horribly wounded in arms, feet and side. He must have been kept in a safe house for months to recover, moved only if absolutely necessary, and when sufficiently fit would have been taken out of the Roman Emperor’s reach to Parthia.
Yet the disciples in the gospels are certain that Jesus was alive and not just a vision—at an early stage, critics had said that Jesus was not human. The author of Luke is at pains to demonstrate that Jesus was truly alive. In Acts, he tarries for as long as forty days, but he was not recognized by Mary Magdalene, nor by two disciples on the road to Emmaus. In his final appearance in John by the Sea of Galilee, the disciples again do not recognize him. If all this were true and not elaborations of a Pauline invention then it implies that Jesus was heavily disguised—or it was someone else! These people knew him extremely well, so why otherwise could they not recognize him?
If in disguise, he must have been hiding from the authorities! At his final appearance he behaves like a man about to depart quickly—to Parthia rather than heaven—repeatedly urging his disciples to take care of my sheep—plainly meaning the lost sheep of the house of Israel. If the Jesus who appeared was someone else, the inference is that “Jesus the Nazarene” was an Essene title and, from the crucifixion, someone else had assumed the position, just as Jesus had taken over from John the Baptist.
The Quran says that Jesus survived because a substitute was crucified in his stead. According to the Basilidians, the substitute was Simon of Cyrene. Mark’s and Matthew’s gospels, from the point when Simon is mysteriously introduced into the account (Mt 27:32-44; Mk 15:21-32), are completely ambiguous about who was crucified. They could read that Simon was. Only at the point of death when they report that Jesus cries out is the doubt settled.
The Ascension
The different scriptural accounts of the ascension of Christ are, like the different stories of the resurrection, quite contradictory, and entitled to as little credit. More remarkably so as only one man, Luke, mentions the public ascension into heaven (Lk 24:51; Acts 1:9-11). The words in Mark are simply that he was received up into heaven and even these are in the final twelve sham verses.
Jesus, from his own declaration to the thief on the cross (Lk 23:24), said, “this day shalt thou be with me in paradise”—he was ascending on the day of his crucifixion. On the same evening as the appearance in Jerusalem, the third day after the crucifixion, Jesus leads the disciples out to Bethany, lifts up his hands to bless them, and in the act of blessing them is carried up into heaven (Lk 24:51). The words “and was carried up into heaven” are omitted by some manuscripts, but not the best. Luke, if he is the author of Acts, has a different tradition in his Acts of the Apostles 1:3. Jesus was “seen” by the disciples for forty days after his resurrection. Only then was he taken up, to be received by a cloud out of their sight, on the Mount of Olives. How did the Holy Ghost again manage to inspire three contrary statements?
At the moment of the ascension, Luke has two men in white garments telling the disciples that Jesus would return in the same fashion that he went. They parallel the two men in shining garments whom the women had seen at the grave. Ten days elapse till “the day of Pentecost was fully come” (Acts 2:1), and we have the account of the fiery Holy Spirit resting on the apostles.
The ascension is mentioned only by Luke. The only gospel writer—neglecting the forged verses added to Mark whose author is unknown—who mentions the ascension was a gentile. We are faced with an astonishing event, reputedly seen by many but recorded only by one. It simply is not credible that people seeing such an astonishing occurrence would not report it later. It is a fiction based on the conventions of ancient solar mythology.
The sun died as it reached the horizon in its daily or annual cycle. When it sank below the horizon out of sight it was buried. It remained below the horizon for a period during which it descended into hell. When it appeared again above the horizon, it was risen again or resurrected and it began its ascent—it ascended into heaven to its zenith.
Since the gods of the heavens behaved like this, the same was believed of human gods. Not only full-fledged gods revived after death, but also primeval heroes, who first sojourn as humans among humans before being elevated to divine rank. Osiris himself may have been such a hero. Certainly some ”lesser” spirits were, such as Hercules among the Greeks, whose resurrection festival is known to Menander of Ephesus (Josephus Antiquities 8:5:3). Hercules ascended to heaven from a burning pyre—in a chariot of fire.
Ascension to heaven is found in scores of Pagan myths, but also in Judaism. The ascension story, like many other stories about Jesus are elaborations based on conventional ideas of what gods and great men did. To believe, in the twenty first century, that these tales are real history, betrays simple mindedness.
Plutarch, though skeptical, tells us in his life of Romulus that the founder of Rome ascended to heaven in about 713 BC. Romulus, after reigning as king for thirty-seven years, suddenly disappeared at a public gathering during a violent thunderstorm in a solar eclipse. No trace of him could be found. Then, one morning he appeared to his friend Julius Proculus, a well known Roman senator of high reputation, larger and more beautiful than in real life, armed with weapons shining like fire. Although in a state of shock, Proculus managed to take in Romulus’s last instructions. The resurrected Romulus explained that he dwelt again in heaven, where he originally came from. Proculus reported his experience to the Roman people and vouched for the accuracy of his account with a solemn oath.
The Annals of the poet Quintus Ennius (169 BC) begins the known written tradition of Romulus’s resurrection, but as Plutarch maintains, Ennius was dependent on earlier Greek material. Only fragments of Ennius’s work are extant but the gist of it can be recovered from Cicero (The State), Livy, Ovid (Metamorphoses and Festivals) and Plutarch (Romulus). Horace alludes to it, treating it as a well-known story. Among Latin Christians, Tertullian (Apology) indicates the same, noting a similarity between the ascension of Christ and that of Romulus. As late as the fourth century AD, in the Life of Commodus, Ælius Lampridis even knows the day of Romulus’s resurrection.
The Romulus legend served as a basis for the official deification of the Roman emperors. It became an archetype of the elevation of Roman rulers to divinity after their death. The founder of the empire, Julius Caesar did the same. A Roman nobleman also swore he had seen Caesar’s ascension. Horace stressed that Romulus and Augustus took the same route to heaven. In Suetonius’s report on Augustus’s funeral (14 AD) we read:
There even came forward a man of praetorian rank to testify on oath that he had observed the form of the cremated emperor rise to heaven.
Narrative forms from the legends reappear in the earliest Christian resurrection accounts. Witnesses dread the one who has been elevated, who looks different than he did in life but recognizable, and makes a supernatural impression. The disciples of Jesus regain their composure, pay close attention to what he says, and receive his instructions. Subsequently they try to list as many witnesses as they can of what they have seen and heard. These features were all identified by Müller-Bardorf from the New Testament accounts, and he showed that Mark 6:48ff was probably a resurrection narrative.
Among Jesus’s appearances should be counted Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus (1 Cor 15:4ff; Acts 9:3ff, 22:6ff, 26:12ff), which derive from at least two different sources according to Emanuel Hirsch. Paul himself says he was called to be not merely a Christian, but also a preacher (Gal 1:15f; Acts 26:16ff), thus receiving a mandate similar to that given to Julius Proculus.
Not only prehistoric heroes and Roman emperors experience resurrection and ascension, but philosophers, being ”men of God,” are elevated in a similar way. Lucian of Samosata on the death of Peregrinus gives a caricature of a life of a philosopher. At the end, from the flames of Peregrinus’s funeral pyre rose a vulture, who, ”with a loud human voice,” called out in archaic poetic Greek, ”I am leaving the earth and ascending to Olympus”. Then an elderly man, with a trustworthy appearance, affirms under oath that he saw the vulture with his own eyes, and saw the deceased philosopher in human form. Peregrinus was cheerfully walking up and down a hall, wearing a white robe and sporting an olive wreath on his head. Though this is satire, caricature is only applied to what is commonly known and easily seen as exaggerrated. To talk about the ascension of philosophers to heaven in parables such as those in the Romulus legend and the apotheosis of Roman emperors had to have been a common custom in Lucian’s day.
Philostratos in his Life of Apollonios of Tyana remarks, as though no evidence were required, that the Athenians only thought Socrates had died. Apollonios spoke in advance of his life after death and predicted that he would appear then to his followers, which he did.
The Indian Saviour Krishna appeared to his disciples after rising from the dead. He ascended to heaven, to Brahma, the first person of the Trinity, as the second person in the Trinity and as he ascended, all men saw him. The ninth incarnation of India, Buddha, also ascended to heaven and footprints in high mountains and inaccessible places are proof—they are Buddha’s on his way up. The Chinese Buddha, Foh, and Lao Tsi of China completed their missions on earth, then ascended into heaven above. Even some of the Hindu saints often publicly ascended to heaven and so did Enoch and Elijah in the Christian bible.
Does the ascension serve to prove that Jesus is a god? If so, then Enoch and Elijah are also gods. Since they allegedly did ascend into heaven, they must have been regarded as gods or were about to be deified, but somehow the extension of the myth was curtailed and they remained mortal albeit angelic ones!
What was Christ doing during the forty days between his resurrection and ascension? At a time when he could have achieved his supposed aim of convincing everyone of his godhead he appeared only a few times, and for scant minutes. Who did he choose to appear before? Not the authorities of the world who could have broadcast the good news effectively but to a few simple minded followers who could not understand what was happening despite repeatedly being told, and seeing impossible miracles and dead bodies walking. The feeble explanation of the Christian is: “It was not his way!” In short, he didn’t want to do what he had been sent to do—show the world the good news.
In any case, what more was proved by Christ’s own resurrection that was not proved by the resurrection of Lazarus, the widow’s son, Jair’s daughter and so on. Why is it more to be believed than these or scriptural examples or indeed many cases reported outside the Christian bible? Why are these others less significant or outright lies, when Christians have no difficulty at all in believing that of Jesus? Why is Christ the “first fruits of the resurrection,” when so many cases occurred before his? Why do Christians build their hopes of immortality entirely upon Christ's resurrection, considering that its foundation is so unsteady? The answers are in Essene philosophy, not that of modern Christians, who do not know they are Essenes.
“Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus”. When witnesses are wrong in one respect, the sensible juror will not be inclined to believe them in others. Everything the witnesses said must be viewed with suspicion. The less reliable witnesses are shown to be, the less credence can be put on anything they say. These writers claimed that a man who was physically dead returned to life. A claim that extraordinary requires extraordinary proof. No modern juror could accept the confused evidence offered in the New Testament as proof of an extraordinary, indeed impossible, event. The inconsistencies should stop anyone but the hopelessly credulous from believing it. Yet Christians do! Christianity’s appeal is emotional not rational, and Christians who pretend otherwise are dishonest.
Further Reading
- More on Jesus crucified
- More on the Jewish idea of resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Jesus is Risen, belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ
- More on secular Christianity
