Part IV: The story of Easter

Chapter 13 addresses a number of general issues relating to the resurrection narratives in the Gospels. Wright dismisses Crossan’s argument that the resurrection story in the Gospel of Peter constitutes a source for the canonical accounts and is generally sceptical of form-critical and redaction-critical attempts to explain their literary history.

He then lists a number of surprise elements in the Gospel stories: i) the lack of embellishment from the biblical tradition; ii) the absence of personal hope regarding life after death; iii) the strange mix of mundaneity and mystery in the descriptions of the risen Jesus; and iv) the emphasis on the presence of women at the tomb (599-608).

There are two options for explaining these oddities. Either the evangelists took a theology of resurrection such as Paul’s which described the peculiar ‘transphysicality’ of the resurrection body and from it developed ‘significantly different narratives about Jesus’. Or we must suppose that Paul provided ‘a theoretical, theological and biblical framework for stories which were already well known’. Then, to pick up on an earlier point, the reason that there is no evocation of Daniel 12:1-3 in the resurrection stories is that the risen body of Jesus had not shone like a star.

I find this second option enormously more probable at the level of sheer history. I can understand, as a historian, how stories like this (and perhaps other similar ones which we do not have) would create a puzzle which the best brains of the next generations would wrestle with, using all their biblical and theological resources. I cannot understand, however, either why any one would develop that theology and exegesis unless there were stories like this to generate the puzzle, or how that theology and exegesis, formed thus (one would have to suppose) by a kind of intellectual parthenogenesis, would then generate three independent stories from which, in each case, all those developed elements had been carefully removed. The very strong historical probability is that, when Matthew, Luke and John describe the risen Jesus, they are writing down very early oral tradition, representing three different ways in which the original astonished participants told the stories. These traditions have received only minimal development, and most of that probably at the final editorial stage, for the very good reason that stories as earth-shattering as this, stories as community-forming as this, once told, are not easily modified. Too much depends on them. (611)

Fear and trembling: Mark

Wright argues, first, largely on internal literary grounds, that Mark originally had a fuller ending that has been lost (he discounts verses 9-20 as a later addition). Secondly, he counters the view of Bultmann and others that the story of the empty tomb is an ‘apologetic legend’. He then highlights a number of features which ‘indicate what sort of a story Mark thinks it is’. i) The story is told from the perspective of the women. ii) There is a repeated emphasis on the unexpectedness of the events. iii) The ‘discovery of the empty tomb is not presented as the historicizing “explanation” of a belief in Jesus’ resurrection, but as itself a puzzle in search of a solution’. iv) Mark casts the angelic interpreter of apocalyptic visions as a real figure – the young man sitting beside the tomb. v) Although the story is truncated, it is implied in the promise of 16:7 that the disciples will see Jesus, thus providing part of the ‘non-negotiable bedrock’ of Christian belief about the resurrection. vi) The narrative grammar of 16:1-8 suggests an alternative explanation of the abrupt ending. If, as Luke suggests, the disciples did not begin to proclaim the resurrection until a month or two later, it may be that Mark’s emphasis on the women’s fear functioned as an apologetic: if the women really had seen the empty tomb, why did they not immediately tell the whole city? Mark’s answer is that they were afraid (630).

Earthquakes and angels: Matthew

Matthew’s extraordinary account of the earthquake and the raising of the dead (27:51-54) has a number of biblical echoes: Ezekiel 37:12-13; Isaiah 26:19; and Daniel 12:2. Wright considers a number of ways of accounting for the story and the allusions; he is reluctant to pass judgment on the question of the historicity of the event but inclines towards the view that

Matthew knows a story of strange goings-on around the time of the crucifixion, and is struggling to tell it so that (1) it includes the desired biblical allusions, (2) it makes at least some minimal historical sense (the earthquake explains the tearing of the Temple veil, the opening of tombs, and particularly the centurion’s comment), and (3) it at least points towards, even if it does not exactly express, the theological meaning Matthew is working towards: that with the combined events of Jesus’ death and resurrection the new age, for which Israel had been longing, has begun. (635)

Apart from this, Wright’s broad conclusion is that Matthew’s exposition has many points of contact with early Christian traditions while retaining a distinctive literary character.

Burning hearts and broken bread: Luke

There are some interesting thoughts here regarding the place of the resurrection narratives within Luke’s work as a whole. In particular, Wright points to a number of parallels between Luke 24 and Luke 1-2. He also suggests that the opening of the eyes of Cleopas and his wife (?) on the road to Emmaus echoes the opening of the eyes of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:7. The correspondence with Luke 1-2 also brings into view the political implications of the resurrection:

When the message goes out to ‘all nations’, it offers more than just a new way of being religious. As Acts makes clear, the message is that Jesus is the world’s true lord. The creator god is bypassing the networks of imperial power and communication. One central meaning of Easter, as far as Luke is concerned, is that Jesus and his followers are now to confront the kingdoms of the world. (653)

The proper biblical background to Luke’s account of the ascension in Acts is Daniel 7. The ascension is:

the vindication of Jesus as Israel’s representative, and the divine giving of judgment, at least implicitly, in his favour and against the pagan nations who have oppressed Israel and the current rulers who have corrupted her. It is, in other words, the direct answer to the disciples’ question of 1.6. This is how the kingdom is being restored to Israel: by its representative Messiah being enthroned as the world’s true lord. (655)

New day, new tasks: John

Two important conclusions are drawn here (674-675). First, the resurrection narrative in chapter 20 is closely integrated with the rest of the book, ‘several of whose main themes can only be understood when they are seen to lead the eye not just towards Jesus’ crucifixion but also towards his resurrection’. Attention is drawn in particular to the structural parallels between chapter 20 and the prologue to the Gospel. Secondly, the ‘new creation’ theology that underlies the whole book indicates that John intended the resurrection story to be interpreted literally and realistically. ‘Precisely because he is an incarnational theologian, committed to recognizing, and helping others to recognize, the living god in the human flesh of Jesus, it is vital and non-negotiable for him that when Thomas makes his confession he should be looking at the living god in human form, not simply with the eye of faith…, but with ordinary humansight, which could be backed up by ordinfary human touch…’ (668).

A final section summarizes the analysis of the Gospel resurrection narratives.

We are left with the conclusion that both the evangelists themselves, and the sources to which they had access, whether oral or written, which they have shaped to their own purposes but without destroying the underlying subject-matter, really did intend to refer to actual events which took place on the third day after Jesus’ execution. The main conclusion that emerges from these four studies of the canonical evangelists is that each of them, in their very different ways, believed that they were writing about events that actually took place. Their stories can be used to refer metaphorically or allegorically to all sorts of other things, and they probably (certainly in the case of Luke and John) intended it to be so. But the stories they told, and the way they crafted them (each so differently, yet in this respect the same) as the deliberate and climactic rounding-off of their whole accounts, indicates that for reasons of narrative grammar as well as theology they must have intended to convey to their readers the sense that the Easter events were real, not fantasy; historical as well as historic. They believed, of course, that these events were foundational for the very existence of the church, and they naturally told the stories in such a way as to bring this out. But in the worldview to which they all subscribed, the fresh modification-from-within of the Jewish worldview which we can trace throughout earliest Christianity, the whole point was that the renewed people of Israel’s god, the creator, had been called into being precisely by events that happened in the world of creation, of space, time and matter. (680-681)