THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
THE EMPTY TOMB
by Rev. Mike YoungWhat did first century Christians mean by the resurrection of Jesus ?
A surface reading of the gospels would lead one to believe that they meant that Jesus died, rose bodily from the grave, walked around appearing to people, then ascended bodily into heaven. Most Christians believe that this is, indeed, what happened. Further, they believe that this literal reading of the reported events is definitive for the Christian faith. The traditional interpretation, as it appears in books, movies, plays, sermons, and Sunday school lessons, would have it that there is in the Gospels a clear, consistent, connected narrative told by eyewitnesses of Jesus' death, resurrection, and appearance afterward, culminating in his ascension into heaven.
However, there are several aspects of the New Testament stories that make this literal understanding difficult. Set aside for the moment the fact that the traditional interpretation involves miracles next to which walking on water and healing the sick pale. Taking the literature on its own terms, what did they understand to have actually occurred ?
There are at least five differing versions of what happen after Jesus' burial: the four gospels and the writings of St. Paul. Who first found the tomb empty ? Who and what did they find there ? To whom did the "risen" Jesus appear ? Where did he go before his ascension ? And, where did he ascend from ? The five sources do not merely contain a different selection of the events that occurred. They describe many mutually exclusive events; some with the same putative witnesses.
If this event was understood as central, why is there so little agreement between the sources as to what actually happened ? The disagreement between the sources is especially interesting, in that the documents were not collected together in their current form for more than two centuries. During that time it does not appear that any attempt was made to reconcile the differences. If these events were central to the early Christian faith, how could they have been uninterested in getting them straight ?
When the events reported in the five sources are listed in parallel (See center-fold) the contradictions become apparent. The growth of the story of the events immediately surrounding the discovery of the empty tomb, from Mark to Luke to John to Matthew, suggest the classic form of the growth of legend. Pentecost didn't happen until 50 days later, at which time they didn't appear to have known that he had risen. The lists of those to whom he allegedly appeared, while overlapping, are inconsistent. Did he ascend from the mountain in Galilee, the Sea of Tiberias, or just outside Jerusalem?
St. Paul's list in I Corinthians of those to whom the risen Jesus appeared is especially problematic. First, the list does not match the gospels. Second, it includes one--the appearance to 500 people at one time--unrecorded elsewhere, yet it would have been the most astounding and incontrovertible of all. And, third, St. Paul adds himself to the list as part of an argument that his experience of the risen Jesus was just as good as the others'. We know what his was, and it was not an appearance by the bodily risen Jesus. Would Paul have used this argument if everybody knew that the resurrection appearance meant an experience of the physical risen Jesus in the flesh ? And remember, Paul's is the oldest version we have !
From the internal evidence alone it appears likely that the resurrection was not understood in the first century to have been a physical getting up out of the grave and bodily appearing to his followers. It appears to have been something much more like Paul's experience--perhaps it was the Pentecost !--with the physical details filled in by the later growth of legend. The gospel stories have the flavor of a story becoming progressively more literal as the first believers try to communicate their experience to the second and third generations of Christians.
As Funk suggests in Honest to Jesus, we tend to assume that first century Christians were simple people who had no understanding of the use of metaphor and story to tell the meaning of their experience. It may be we who have been the literalists, not they. Can we not credit them with using the best images available to communicate what they knew were profound truths; and, knowing they were images, were quite comfortable not worrying about trying to reconcile them.
Later generations of Christians have valiantly attempted to reconcile them, but, alas, they are irreconcilable. The Biblical stories conflict; both with each other and with doctrine. In order to see what you are supposed to see there, you have to know it ahead of time. And if you permit yourself to see what is there, you won't find what you are supposed to find.
There are five separate sources, none of them by eyewitnesses, with very little agreement among them. Such agreement as there is is because two, Matthew and Luke, are copying a third, Mark, virtually verbatim much of the time. Indeed, eleven-twelfths of the book of Mark is copied in Matthew and Luke. That's not the sort of thing an eyewitness normally does. The book of John tells a fourth very different tale.
The Gospel according to Mark is the oldest of the Gospels. We know this because Mark does not know about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A. D., and the other three do. Mark begins with Jesus' baptism. No birth stories. It tells of Jesus' ministry briefly, and devotes most of the book to his last few weeks. It is an augmented crucifixion narrative. It ends with Jesus being crucified and placed into a tomb, awaiting final burial after the Sabbath. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome come on Sunday morning to complete the burial preparations. They find the stone rolled away, and a young man who simply says, "He is not here. Tell his disciples he is going ahead of you to Galilee." And then Mark says "The women fled and told no one." And that's where the book ends.
This suggests that very early in the life of the new church, the story of the bodily resurrection was not known. It could not, therefore, have been the actual foundation of early Christianity, OR they must have meant something else by the Resurrection. Something other than a resuscitated corpse and an empty hole.
Next comes Luke. Luke was Saint Paul's traveling companion and scribe. He was a Greek convert, not a Jew, and neither he nor Paul were eyewitnesses. The Gospel of Luke begins with a birth narrative, totally different and completely at odds with the birth narrative in Matthew, the only other book that has one. It has Mark's narrative of Jesus' ministry, with some material of Jesus' teachings scattered in.
But it does not end where Mark ends. The women come to prepare Jesus for burial, find the stone rolled away, and TWO men in white clothing. The men tell the women, "He told you he would arise." They run off to tell the disciples, and are not believed. Finally, Peter comes, sees the empty tomb, and is confused. Luke then goes on to describe several appearances of Jesus, all different from the other Gospels.
Next, the Gospel of John. The most literary and philosophical of the four. It was not written by the disciple John, but may well have been based on material from John's later followers. Its style is totally different. It shows no knowledge of the other books. And it differs in significant detail from them: different teachings, different events, in different order. It begins, not with Jesus' baptism nor with the birth stories. It begins with Jesus as the pre-existing logos; which was a technical philosophical term referring to the organizing principle of the universe in several Greek philosophies. It switches back and forth in its narrative from story to quote to theologizing in an often dizzying manner. The gospel of John has Mary Magdalene come to the tomb alone. She finds the stone rolled away and, without looking, runs to tell Peter, "They have taken Him." It is interesting that her first assumption is that somebody ripped off the body. Peter and John come running, look, find the tomb empty, and go home. And the Gospel of John says they didn't know he was supposed to rise. Mary stays behind weeping. Finally, she looks inside and sees two angels. (One young man, then two men in white, and NOW two angels.) Then, Jesus is there, but he won't let her touch Him. She runs and tells the others, "I have seen him." Jesus then later appears to the disciples twice in Jerusalem, and then again by the Sea of Tiberias in Galilee.
Now we come to Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew least of all the Gospels is an eyewitness account. It is a paper and paste pastiche, an editing together of various then-existing traditions and documents. You can sometimes even see the seams where it was stuck together in the way the language changes. It has an opening birth narrative wholly different from Luke's. It, too, uses eleven-twelfths of the Book of Mark, verbatim. It has chunks of Jesus' teachings, identical to Luke's; but instead of being in context as Jesus is teaching, in Matthew they are put together in clumps of teaching, like aphorisms connected to no context.
The whole narrative is strung together on a series of Old Testament prophecies used as the basic organizational framework. The prophecies begin with the stock phrase "This was done in fulfillment of the prophecy which said . . ."
When it comes to the resurrection, Matthew goes all out! Remember that in Mark, Luke and John, no one knows that Jesus has risen. They don't expect it. And when the women come to tell the disciples about the missing body, as in Luke and John, all are surprised, confused, and unbelieving. But Matthew has the tomb sealed by the Sanhedrin. Matthew has an armed guard there protecting the tomb. When the women come, an earthquake happens and then suddenly an angel descends from heaven to roll away the stone. The guards are zapped somehow and become as dead men. And behold, the tomb is already empty. Marvelous theater!
From Mark to Matthew we see the growth of legend from a secret that no one knew--"and they left and told no one," Mark says--to angels and earthquakes and a Houdini-like escape from a locked and guarded tomb.
The theory which Matthew implies was widespread appears to have been that the disciples took the body and hid it or buried it somewhere else, then claimed he had risen: an out and out hoax. But, as we have seen in the earliest versions, the empty tomb was a secret. Was it portrayed as a secret because--consistent with Paul's version--in the early years resurrection was not understood as a literal, physical event ? Is the "secret" motif an otherwise missing attempt to reconcile the contradictions ?
Another theory, most popularly available in the book THE PASSOVER PLOT, is that the whole thing was a put-up job from the outset. One of the characteristics of Jesus' ministry, recorded in all of the sources and a major element in the new church's teaching, is that he systematically went around fulfilling all the prophecies popularly believed at the time as to what would happen in the last days before the Last Judgment, when God would come and establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Jesus frequently makes complicated arrangements, even behind the backs of his disciples, to see that such events are carried out according to the prophecies.
There are several things which happen in Jesus' crucifixion which are different from how we know such political executions were usually handled in that period. And, remember, Jesus clearly had connections in high places. Joseph of Arimathea, the one in whose tomb he was laid, was a member of the Sanhedrin. The Garden of Gethsemane was not some public Central Park. It was a rich man's private estate. Jesus was taken from the cross within hours of his crucifixion, whereas victims normally were left on the cross for days, and usually died not of their injuries, but from exposure. Indeed, even then they were left to be literally eaten by the carrion birds. They were forbidden to be buried.
The Passover Plot theory is that the vinegar sponge from which Jesus was given a drink contained a drug. He was then taken down as soon as he appeared to be dead, and laid in the tomb to recover from the drug's effects. He was then spirited away to Galilee. But why would such a charade have been done?
One explanation is that this final fulfillment of prophecy was supposed to result in a popular uprising of the people against the Roman occupation forces. But, somehow it went tragically awry. Another explanation is that Jesus and his co-conspirators were acting out, for real, the initiation rites of a Jewish mystery cult, of which baptism is a pale copy, a symbolic death and resurrection. Jesus and his followers were acting out the real thing.
Some suggest that the rising of Lazarus from the dead, reported in the Gospel of John and removed by the earliest Church fathers from the Gospel of Mark, was a rehearsal for the plot, a dry run, to test the drug on Lazarus.
Did the plot fail ? Jesus disappeared from the story. Did he survive, only to die shortly thereafter ? Is this the kernel of truth hidden in his reported post-resurrection appearances and then permanent disappearance? Or is this all taking bits and pieces of legend and making it into something it is not, and never was. Is it possible that the early Church meant something else entirely by resurrection? Something subsequently misunderstood and changed by later generations of Christians?
I mentioned earlier that the oldest material in the New Testament is not the Gospels, but the Letters of Saint Paul. What does Saint Paul have to say about the resurrection? One thing is clear: Saint Paul did not believe in the empty tomb. He could not have, or he would not have written what he did and how he did.
Paul is writing to the young Christian church in Corinth, about 50 A. D. He had started the church a few years before on his first missionary journey through Asia Minor and Greece. He had taught them the Good News as he had gotten it straight from the eyewitnesses. The reason he is writing is that some other Christian missionary has come through Corinth and said that Paul wasn't a real apostle because he hadn't seen the risen Jesus. Paul, in First Corinthians 15, verses 3 through 8, is defending himself against this claim. Paul begins by listing all the people to whom Jesus appeared after he had been crucified.
"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." (Now comes the interesting part.) "And that he appeared to Cephas, (that's Peter) then to the twelve, then he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all of the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me."
Look at that list closely. First, it is interesting that the women are missing from it. Although two of the Gospels have Mary Magdalene the first person to whom he appeared, set that aside. Paul was a confirmed misogynist. Second, he appeared to Peter. We know about that. Third, he appeared to the twelve. We know about that one, too. Fourth, he appeared to 500 people at one time. We'll come back to that. Fifth, he appeared to James, that is, the brother of Jesus, leader of the early Church in Jerusalem. We have no record of that but virtually everything was lost when Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A. D. A fragment of that may yet appear as ancient documents are dug up around the Holy Land. Sixth, he appeared to all of the apostles. That's not the twelve disciples. "The apostles" was the label for early teachers and missionaries like Stephen and Apollos.
Finally, he appeared to Paul. We know what Paul's experience of the risen Jesus was. He was struck blind on the road to Damascus en route to persecute some Christians. That story is told several times in the New Testament. Details vary, but the stories are consistent about one thing: this was no resuscitated corpse. It was a psychic or ecstatic experience. Inner and emotional. If Freud had been on the spot he might have said poor Saul has just had a psychotic episode, complete with auditory hallucinations. He heard a voice no one else heard.
Now, remember, Paul is trying to convince the Corinthians that his resurrection experience was just as good as those others. If it was generally known that Jesus got up out of the tomb and walked around for a while afterwards talking to his followers, Paul's argument would have fallen flat on its face. If, in 50 A. D., everybody knew about the bodily resurrection, Paul would not have dared to use this argument.
But there is more. Further on in the chapter Paul describes the resurrection body. First Corinthians 15: 35: "But some will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" he asks. The gospel stories make it sound like the same body that he started with. He walks, he talks, he eats, he lets Thomas put his hand in the wounds. But what does Paul say? Quoting again, "You foolish man, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel. In tell you this, brethren, flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God." That does not sound like a revivified corpse rising, but a spiritual--that is to say a psychic or ecstatic--resurrection. Visible only to the eyes of faith. Therefore, not only no empty tomb; one is not needed.
Ah, but there is still more. Let's return to the appearance of the risen Jesus to 500 people at one time. A resuscitated corpse appearing to 500 people at one time could be expected to have created quite a stir. Christians would have been talking about that all over the place. Roman soldiers would have been talking about that. That would have been recorded somewhere and preserved. But it wasn't recorded. Nowhere in the whole of Christian literature, other than in this one passing reference by Saint Paul in First Corinthians, is this repeated.
Why not? Because it was an ecstatic experience, like Paul's. Not a perambulating cadaver. It was an inner, religious experience, not an external, literal one. With that in mind, maybe it was recorded and later Christians misunderstood it. (Or masked it, knowing it was at odds with the growing legend of the literal, physical rising.)
Luke tells a story in Acts of Jesus' followers gathered in an upper room in Jerusalem after the crucifixion. They are there to choose a replacement for Judas Iscariot amongst the twelve. Already Jesus' organization is continuing. They meet there and choose a man named Matthias, and they begin to initiate him. Suddenly, they are all possessed by the Holy Spirit and begin speaking in tongues. They come down out of the upper room and they begin preaching all around that section of Jerusalem, speaking in tongues. Now, poor Luke, who was a Greek, and who hung out with Saint Paul who did not approve of speaking in tongues (Indeed, the beautiful thirteenth chapter of Corinthians about love, if you read it in context, is actually a lengthy speech against speaking in tongues) completely misunderstands. He has heard the story and is repeating it for his reader but he thinks speaking in tongues means miraculously being able to speak in foreign languages. He describes the people in Jerusalem being able to understand each in their own language. But speaking in tongues is being so swept away in religious ecstasy that a person babbles. The technical term is "glossolalia," and you can hear it today at any charismatic or Holy Roller church.
I suggest that was the appearance of Christ to 500 people at one time. That was the kind of experience that Paul was talking about. And that was what the early Church meant by the resurrection. Only as Christianity became a second- and third-generation phenomenon--having lost the fire and ecstasy of that first creative flush of rekindled hope and comradeship--only then, as it begins to become an institution, do the stories begin to take on the literalness of legend. Ecstatic reports, told and retold, become symbolic events, become literal occurrences. An infusion of religious ecstasy becomes in the nth retelling an empty tomb and a revivified corpse.
Just as legends that would have been a surprise to Buddha built up around his memory after he died, so they built up around Jesus. A miraculous birth, miraculous acts, a wondrous resurrection from the dead amid earthquakes and angels and ascension bodily into heaven.
There were three basic schools of thought on the Messiah of Jesus' day. They have overlapping elements. But the three points of view are discernible. In the first, the Messiah was expected to be a Davidic king, a political liberation movement to rid them of the Roman and Herodian conquerors. To this point of view the Messiah's death could conceivably be inspirational, to spark the people to revolt. But an other worldly kingdom would be seen as a failure. Heroic perhaps, but irrelevant. To them the empty tomb resurrection would have been meaningless.
The second expected first an earthly Messiah, a political leader backed by, followed by a heavenly Son of Man leading an angelic army to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Literally, God thrusting Himself and His power into history.
Albert Schweitzer thinks that Jesus expected to be miraculously transformed at His death into the Son of Man, this angelic creature that was to come on God's behalf and initiate the end of the world. The Messiah dies, and is raised up to inaugurate the Last Judgment. From this point of view, it all fizzled. Nothing happened. They kept waiting for the Second Coming. Jesus said that some would not die before it happened. As the last of the eyewitnesses died off there was an acute crisis within early Christianity.
Finally, there were the esoteric followers of the mystery religions. The place of initiation on the mountain of transfiguration in Galilee may have been related to this. The mock death and raising of Lazarus may have been related to this. Perhaps the men in ritual white garb at the tomb were part of this, some surmise. But for them, a public empty tomb would confound the whole system. They thought in terms of evil flesh and good spirit. They sought not the resuscitation of evil flesh but rather spiritual freedom from it. Only a body still in the grave and a spiritual experience of the risen--spiritual--Christ would have fit their expectations.
None of these points of view envision an empty tomb, and they would have been confounded by it. So what really happened? That is unknown, and probably unknowable, except to the eyes of faith. That thought world is almost wholly unenterable by us, as it was for the Greco-Roman world of that time. And so, at that time, whatever it was that really happened, the meaning of it was transliterated by the early Church into Greco-Roman terms, and evolved into the Christianity we know today.
One of the problems in all of this is that a message of mercy, peace, gentleness, forgiveness, of personal and cultural transformation, gets turned into a religion that becomes a contest of who can manage to believe the most outlandish and incredible things. The message of love becomes an ideological club which it clearly was not for the first century church.