N.T Wright was the Bishop of Durham until 2010 when he retired. He is a leading New Testament scholar, and writes about the divine revelation that is Jesus Christ from a different perspective than I'm used to hearing, at least at this point in my journey. Unlike many other Christian apolegetics about the historicity of Christ, Wright does his best to analyze the events of the Bible from a 'now if this isn't true, why would it be in there?' type of exegesis. He wrote Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, which I read several months back, but I'll need to reread it in order to write a review on. The dude knows his stuff, and is clearly well read if the above picture is his personal library of books (that he's also, in fact, read). I think Wright brings up some fascinating points, and reads into the text as a historian, which can be hard for those of us who aren't trained to do so. The following information that i'm going to summarize comes from the appendix of There is a God, which I reviewed earlier.
Summary:
In answer to the question of the existence of a man named Jesus, Wright comments that as a historian, there is just a massive amount of evidence, perhaps more massive than anyone in the ancient world. He admits that some people have statues or inscriptions, but he says then again, some mythical gods also have statues, so it's hard to say if a statue of Jesus would cement his existence any more than it already is. He finishes this brief section saying that no historian (except one or two that he knows of) actually believes Jesus didn't exist, whether they be Christian, Muslim, atheist or agnostic (compare this statement to the propaganda that is the Zeitgeist movement, which even prominent atheists regard as terrible scholarship).
Pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus, Wright looks deeply into the culture of the Jewish and pagan world that the story of Christ took place in, to see what the doctrine of the resurrection looks like in that backdrop. He makes the following points:
(1) Instead of resurrection being something that would happen to all God's people at the end, the early Christians believed it happened to one person in advance. No first-century Jew, as far as Wright knows, would have believed one person would be raised before everyone else.
(2) First-century Jews believed one of two things about resurrection. Either you would receive a physical body all over again, or you would receive a luminous body, one shining like a star. The early Christians didn't believe either of those things. They believed in a transformation of the physical body - in that the body contained substance of some kind, but was not susceptible to pain or suffering or death.
(3) Early Christians obviously believed the Messiah had been raised from the dead. Contrast this with the Jewish people, who didn't believe the Messiah was supposed to be killed.
(4) In Judaism, the idea of resurrection had been used as a metaphor for "return from exile," but in the early Christian church, it was used in connection with baptism and holiness.
(5) For the earliest Christians, the Resurrection is something that we can all participate in, furthering the work started at Easter. This view is quite different from how it was viewed in Judaism.
(6) In the early Christian church, resurrection becomes the focal point of their doctrine, as opposed to just one doctrine among many other as it was in Judaism.
(7) Finally, the early Christian church is virtually unanimous with their view of what happens after death - resurrection. In Judaism, there were several different views, and in the pagan world there was an even more diverse range.
- Wright goes on to make the point that if the story of Jesus 'rising from the dead' had only popped up several decades after his death, we would expect different strands of Christianity, with different views on the death, and, possible resurrection, of Christ.
- Wright also says that if a Jew was going to make up the story of Jesus Christ rising from the dead, he would have most likely been drawn to use Daniel 12, which speaks of the righteous 'shining like stars.' Jesus actually quotes this passage in the book of Matthew. Wright believes that if someone was going to make it up, Daniel 12 would have been the ideal place to draw material - but this is not what we see in the Gospel narrative.
- Wright also looks at the accounts of the Gospels in their original Greek writing, and points out that they all use very different words, writing, and contain different (and sometimes conflicting) details. This leads a historian to believe they were not merely copied from one another.
- Wright points out that in the writings of Paul, we hear him say that Christ was raised 'according to scriptures.' However, this type of theological reflection is absent in all the gospels except John, and even in John it is only mentioned that the disciples who went to the tomb 'did not yet know the scriptures said he must rise from the dead.' So looking at this - Wright comes to the conclusion that an early oral tradition, seen in the Gospels, preceded the theological reflection of the Old Testament scriptures that we see in Paul's writings.
- Another point Wright makes about the Gospel narratives is the use of women as witnesses. We can see that already in Corinthians, Paul has taken them out of the account, because in the ancient world women were not credible witnesses. This would lead us to believe that already, in the 50's, the public tradition had taken the women out of the story to make the first witnesses seem more reliable.
- Moving on from the last point, all four Gospel narratives have Mary Magdalene as a witness to the narrative. Wright believes there is no way the early Christians would have put this in there if they had made the story up, even just several years later.
- Wright also mentions that in the Gospel accounts, the story goes 'Jesus is raised - therefore he really is the Messiah!,' whereas in Paul, we see 'Christ is risen, therefore we will be raised.' This leads Wright to believe that the Gospels were written before Paul's letters, when the early Church was still reeling in shock from the aftermath of the resurrection.
- Wright believes that in order to account for the rapid rise of Christianity, as well as the points made above, there had to be an empty tomb that was known to be the correct tomb, and there must have been appearances of the risen Jesus after his death. If there was an empty tomb but no appearances, the rest of the world would have concluded the body of Christ was stolen, and there would never have been any talk of resurrection, if all that in fact happened was an empty tomb. Furthermore, if there were appearances, say, hallucinations, which is what some people maintain happened, the disciples may have been comforted, but eventually would have had to realize that the body was still in the tomb, and thus, Jesus was in fact dead. Wright believes that in order to explain all of this evidence, the best explanation that covers this scope is in fact to say that Christ rose from the dead.
My Take:
A lot of fuss is made over the earliest fragment of documentation that we have (a fragment of John, as it turns out, which dates to ~120 A.D). People feel that the 90 some years that span our earliest known fragment and the death of Christ is enough time to propagate a rumor widespread enough to account for the rise of the early Church. What I like about Wright's analysis is that he doesn't even appeal to artifacts, but simply analyzes the text, considering the possible factors that could contribute to what we see in the Gospels. He points to many ways in which the doctrine of the resurrection, and it's newfound importance and unanimity in the early Church, lead one to believe that such a shift would not occur uncaused. Furthermore, he gives several reasons why the accounts in the Gospels may in fact precede the writings of Paul, if not in written form, at least orally.
Like many people who argue the Resurrection of Christ as authentic, they mention these type of key points, similar to ones made by Wright here, in an attempt to show that an actual resurrection is the best hypothesis (one Wright believes is in fact necessary) in order to explain all the factors we know to be true about the early Christian church and their belief in the risen Jesus.
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