Gary Habermas is the closest thing to a New Testament critic
one will ever find teaching in the hallowed, but far from hollow, halls of
Jerry Falwell’s Liberty
University.
Exceedingly well read, Professor Habermas is the epitome of what James Barr
called the “maximal conservative” approach to New Testament scholarship. The
maximal conservative proposes to examine an issue in a neutral scholarly way
but always comes out defending the
traditional view, often explicitly appealing to the (inappropriate) rationale:
“innocent until proven guilty,” as if the orthodox view of any matter must
claim the benefit of the doubt. That is to say, he poses as an objective
researcher into open questions regarding the early Christian literature and
history, but his conclusions are determined in advance by a dogmatic agenda. As
a member of the Liberty
University
faculty, Dr. Habermas is honor-bound to believe in the absolute inerrancy of
the Bible, the dogma that the Bible is free from all historical errors, and
even that its authors never expressed differences of opinion on religious
matters. The inerrantist believes either that the text of the Bible was
verbally dictated by the Almighty (whether or not the human penman knew it at
the time) or that at least the result was the same as if God had dictated it, even
if “all” he did was to oversee the writing process providentially. Someone with
a view like this adopts the posture of the biblical critic not because he or
she believes it will shed new light on ancient texts but rather in order to
defend traditional, orthodox readings of the text from “heretical” new research
that threatens by its very nature to render such readings obsolete, depriving
orthodox dogma of its seeming proof texts. The unstated goal is to beat the
genuine critic at his own game so as to defend the party line. That is the
business Gary Habermas is in. That is the approach of the many books he has
written. They are all exercises in apologetics, the scholastic defense of the
faith. The position is an ironic one, since such attempts to clamp the lid on
the open Bible are just the sort of bold, open-ended investigation that led to
the Protestant Reformation and the Biblical Theology Movement.
Three major difficulties beset this
erudite and clearly written essay. The first is the character of the whole as
essentially an exercise in the fallacious argument of appeal to the majority.
Habermas does not want to commit this logical sin, so he admits in the
beginning that the mere fact of the (supposed) consensus of scholarly opinion
to which he repeatedly appeals does not settle anything, and as if to head off
the charge I have just made, he says he supplies sufficient clues in his
endnotes to enable the interested reader to follow up the original scholars’
arguments, which, he admits, must bear the brunt of the analysis. I’m sorry,
but that is simple misdirection like that practiced by a sleight-of-hand
artist. You can say you reject the appeal to consensus fallacy, but that makes
no difference if all you do afterward is to cite “big names” on the subject.
And that is what happens here.
The second
besetting sin is Habermas’s neglect of much recent scholarship that has put
well into the shade much of the reasoning of Joachim Jeremias, C.H. Dodd, and
even Rudolf Bultmann, to which he appeals. I am not trying to play posturing
here, as if to score points against Professor Habermas. For all I know, he is
quite conversant with these works and is just not impressed by them. Who knows?
All I am saying is that I am impressed by them. And if you are, too, you will know
that contemporary studies of Acts are increasingly inclined to treat the
narrative as a tissue of second-century fictions and legends no different in
principle and little different in degree from the Apocryphal Acts, though it is
better written than these others (see Richard I. Pervo, Profit With Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles,
1987). You will know that J.C. O’Neill (The
Theology of Acts in its Historical Setting, 1961) and others regard the
supposed bits of early tradition found in the speeches in Acts to be signs of a
late date, of the Christology and theology of the Apostolic Fathers, not of the
primitive church. You will know that many regard the so-called Semitic flavor
of Acts not as a sign of an underlying early Aramaic tradition, but as an
attempt to pastiche the Septuagint and so lend the book a biblical flavor. You
will be familiar with the fact that a number of scholars (not just me!) have
spotlighted the appearance list in 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as a later interpolation
into the text, an alternate explanation for all the non-Pauline linguistic
features Habermas invokes as evidence that Paul is quoting early tradition
(Arthur Drews, Winsome Munro, R. Joseph Hoffmann, William O. Walker, J.C.
O’Neill, G.A. Wells). And perhaps most important, you would realize that, as
Burton L. Mack, Jonathan Z. Smith and their school argue, the very idea of
Christianity beginning with a Big Bang of startling visions of Jesus on Easter
morning is highly dubious, very likely the fruit, not the root, of Christian
theological evolution, alongside other versions of early Jesus movements and
Christ cults that had no need for or belief in a resurrection. You would know
that there may be quite a gap between whomever and whatever the earliest Christians
may have been (if you can even draw a firm line where proto-Christianity split
off from “Essenism” or the Mystery Religions). Like Habermas, I must be content
to recommend these writings, but I am not trying to win an argument here,
merely to challenge Habermas’s contention that there is a safe consensus among
today’s scholars on these issues. There is no substitute for studying the
issues oneself.
The third big problem with the
essay is the lamentable leap in logic whereby, like a Scientific Creationist,
Habermas seems to assume that the (supposed) absence of viable naturalistic
explanations of the first resurrection-sightings proves the objective reality
of the resurrection. This is to pull the reins of scientific investigation much
too quickly! And in fact one may never
yank them in the name of miracle, for that is a total abdication of the
scientific method itself, which never proceeds except on the assumption that a
next, traceable, i.e., naturalistic, step may be found. And if it never is,
then science must confess itself forever stymied. To do otherwise, as Habermas
does, is to join the ranks of the credulous who leap from the seeming improbabilities
of ancient Egyptians engineering the Pyramids to concluding that space aliens
built them with tractor beams! But let us go back and examine some of
Habermas’s claims in detail.
Habermas’s Ennead
Our apologist lays out a hand of trump cards he thinks will
justify him gathering up all the stakes. But does he win the game? We need to
take a closer look at his cards. First,
“There is little doubt, even in critical circles, that the apostle Paul is the
author of the book of 1 Corinthians. Rarely is this conclusion questioned” (p.
264) But there is reason to question it, and this is where the appeal to the majority
is so misleading. Bruno Bauer and a whole subsequent school
of New Testament critics including
Samuel Adrian Naber, A.D. Loman, Allard Pierson, W.C. van Manen, G.A. van den
Bergh van Eysinga, Thomas Whittaker, and L. Gordon Rylands all rejected the authenticity
of 1 Corinthians as a Pauline epistle. And they did so with astonishing
arguments that remain unanswered to this day, the major strategy of those few
“consensus” scholars who even deigned to mention them being to laugh them off
as a priori outrageous. These
arguments have been revived and carried further today by Hermann Detering,
Darrell J. Doughty, and myself. Again, appealing to authoritative names in the
manner of an exorcism is vain in scholarly matters. I mean only to indicate
that there are real and open issues here, and that one must not over-simplify
the debate by taking important things for granted.
Second, “Virtually all scholars agree
that in this text [1 Corinthians 15:3ff] Paul recorded an ancient tradition(s)
about the origins of the Christian gospel. Numerous evidences indicate that
this report is much earlier than the date of the book in which it appears”
(ibid.) This is not really a separate argument from the next two following, but
let us briefly note the oddity of the whole notion of Paul, if he is indeed the
author, passing down a “tradition,” much less an “ancient” one (though perhaps
Habermas means ancient in relation to us,
but then that’s true of the whole epistle, isn’t it?). Habermas has set foot on
one of the land mines in Van Manen’s territory: the anachronism of the picture
of Paul, a founder of Christianity, already being able to appeal to hoary
traditions, much less creedal formulae! All this demands a date long after
Paul.
Not only that, but as Harnack
showed long ago, the 1 Corinthians 15 list is clearly a composite of pieces of
two competing lists, one making Cephas the prince of apostles, the other
according that dignity to James the Just. The conflation of the lists (to say
nothing of the addition of gross apocryphal elements like the appearance to the
half-thousand!) presupposes much historical water under the bridge, way too
much for Paul.
Third, “The vast majority of critical
scholars concur on an extremely early origin for this report. Most frequently,
it is declared that Paul received the formula between two and eight years after
the crucifixion, around A.D. 32-38” (ibid.) because…
Fourth, “Researchers usually conclude
that Paul received this material shortly after his conversion during his stay
in Jerusalem with Peter and James
(Gal 1:18-19), who are both included
in Paul’s list of individuals to whom Jesus appeared (1 Cor 15:5, 7)” (ibid.).
First, one
may ask concerning all this what it is that Paul was supposed to have been
preaching prior to this visit, since 1 Corinthians 15:1 makes the list the very
content of his initial preaching to the Corinthian church! The text as we read
it gives no hint that Paul is supposed to be citing some older material (though
I agree the material is alien to the context, not being the writer’s own words.
I just make it a later interpolation, not a Pauline citation of prior material.
It’s just that the text does not mean to let on to this). But if he does regard the list as a piece of
earlier material, he leaves no interval between the beginning of his apostolic
preaching and the learning of this so-crucial list. Ouch.
Nor should
we forget how Galatians tells us in no uncertain terms that the gospel message
of Paul was in no way mediated through any human agency, which would just not
be true if he was simply handing on tradition “like a plastered cistern that
loses not a drop.”
Besides this, it is sheer surmise
that Paul would have memorized this text at the behest of Peter and James when
he was in their company in Jerusalem
on the occasion mentioned in Galatians. In fact, to bring the list and the
visit together in the same breath is already a piece of harmonization after the
manner of hybridizing Mark with Luke by saying one of Luke’s angels was out
buying a lottery ticket when Mark got there, pen in hand. It is like pegging
the visionary ascent to the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:1-10) as the same as
the Damascus Road encounter
of Acts. Purely gratuitous.
To make things worse, there is the
serious question of whether the fortnight’s visit of Paul to Jerusalem
in Galatians 1:18-24 is original to the text either. It bristles with odd
vocabulary, even in so short a text!, and neither Tertullian’s text nor
Marcion’s seems to have contained it. It looks like a Catholicizing
interpolation trying to shorten the span between Paul’s conversion and his
first encounter with the Jerusalem
apostles, fourteen years after (Galatians 2:1).
I realize that evangelical readers
will be snickering by this time. They have been led to scoff at this way of
scrutinizing the text for interpolations too early for the extant manuscript
sources to attest them. I recommend William O. Walker’s Interpolations in the Pauline Letters as a good introduction to
this methodology and its inherent plausibility. Conservatives have elevated to
a dogma the premature and groundless judgment that we can take for granted that
no important interpolations crept into the text during that early period for
which there is absolutely no manuscript evidence either way.
Fifth,
Habermas takes it as independent corroboration of Paul’s (= the list’s) claim
that various people saw the Risen Jesus that Paul got the creed from James and
Peter: “if critical scholars are correct that Paul received the creedal
material in 1 Corinthians 15:3ff. from Peter and James in Jerusalem
in the early 30s A.D., then we have strong evidence that the reported
appearances of the risen Jesus came from the original apostles.” (p. 267). If
they gave him the list, they must have drawn up the list to begin with, or at
least informed those who did. I don’t see how this follows. And the whole
scenario reminds me too much of the old legend that the Apostles Creed was
written, an article at a time, as each apostle added on his favorite tenet.
Habermas points to Galatians
1:18-20, the mention of Paul heading for Jerusalem
to seek Peter’s expertise, presumably on the main features of his gospel or
about the life of Jesus: if they had told him something very different
concerning the resurrection than we read in Paul, wouldn’t he have said so? But
again, this is part of that harmonizing interpolation, inserted just to make
things easier for apologists like Habermas himself.
And in general, we must recognize
that references to what the apostles may or may not have said, occurring not in
writings by them but rather in writings by a different author have no
independent historical value. We might as well invoke John the Baptist’s
endorsement of Jesus from the gospels as independent evidence for the
historical Jesus!
Sixth,
Paul (= the list) includes an appearance to Paul himself. I think the
interpolated list mentioned Paul in the third person, and that the redactor
(inevitably) made it first person, an adaptation the interpolator of 2
Corinthians 12:1-0 could not competently carry through. In any case, if it is
an interpolation, it is post-Pauline and pseudepigraphical, so this one depends
on a prior decision as to authorship.
Habermas notes that the three
accounts in Acts of Paul’s encounter with the Risen One on the road to
Damascus
tend to corroborate the statement of the 1 Corinthians 15 list about a Pauline
appearance. This is ironic, since Luke seems instead to want to ring down the
curtain on the resurrection appearances with the ascension, allowing Paul and
Stephen to have mere visions afterward. This he does to rebut claims for their
non-twelve apostleship. And, as Detering notes, the element of Paul being blinded (borrowed ultimately from the
conversion of Heliodorus in 2 Maccabees 3) surely means to deny that Paul saw the Risen Jesus in any manner
analogous to the twelve, who, after all, had tea with the Risen Savior on more
than one occasion.
Seventh,
Habermas cites Paul’s Jerusalem
visit in Galatians 2:1-10, which issued in an A plus report card, as further evidence
that Paul and the Jerusalem
apostles had no serious disagreement. Suffice it to say that the text is very
clear on the point at issue in these discussions: not resurrection but rather circumcision
of the Gentiles. We simply do not know if the question of the resurrection came
up on that occasion. There is no point in pretending we do, or we are making it
up as we go along. Habermas warns: “rather than highlight what many
contemporary scholars think cannot be
known about the New Testament testimony, I want to concentrate on the evidence
that we do have” (p. 262). But this
isn’t part of it.
Eighth,
“After recounting the creed and listing key witnesses to the appearances of
Jesus, Paul declared that all the other apostles were currently preaching the same
message concerning Jesus’ appearances (1 Cor 15:11-15). In other words, we have
it on Paul’s authority that these resurrection appearances were also being
proclaimed by the original apostles” (p. 267). But we cannot say we know they
were preaching the same list or the same listed appearances until we read some other document by one of them that has the list in common with 1
Corinthians 15. And we have no such text. You can’t blithely quote Paul as
evidence for what others were saying. The 1 Corinthians text does not take us
out of the range of what Paul is saying—unless we recognize that the material
is interpolated! And then the point is that it is a Catholicizing gloss,
rewriting history to make it look like Paul agreed with the Jerusalem
apostles when in fact he hadn’t.
Ninth,
“Another indicator of the appearances to the original apostles is the Gospel
accounts… Even from a critical viewpoint, it can be shown that several of the
appearance narratives report early tradition [an apologetical euphemism for
“early rumor”] as Dodd argues after a careful analytical study. He contends
that the appearance narratives in Matthew 28:8-10, 16-20 and John 20:19-21, and, to a lesser extent, Luke
24:36-49, are based on early material [again: apologetical euphemism—“material”!]. The remaining Gospel
accounts of Jesus’ resurrection appearances are lacking in typical mythical
tendencies and likewise merit careful consideration” (p. 268). Now isn’t that
special?
It is hard to stop cringing and to
know where to begin after this fusillade of fustian. Matthew 28:8-10—based on
early tradition? This is simply part of Matthew’s fictive add-on to Mark’s
empty tomb narrative which itself does not manage to make Dodd’s list! Not only
that, it represents editorial rewriting and contradiction of the Markan
original! Likewise, 16-20 are a mere pastiche-summary of a
resurrection-commission narrative, as if the evangelist knew more or less what
this kind of story sounded like but couldn’t quite pull it off, much like the
inept paraphrase of earlier materials in the Longer Ending of Mark. The
disciples meet Jesus on the mountain he had specified—where? And when did he
tell them? This is a reference back to something he forgot to include in his
story, like somebody getting ahead of himself and spoiling the ending of a
joke. Verse 17 means to have the epiphany of Christ quell all doubt, but
instead the narrator rushes through it with the incoherent “they worshipped him
though they doubted” (masked by translations because it wouldn’t sound good in
Easter sermons). Some of the language is Matthean (“unto the consummation of
the age;” “to disciple”); the rest is derived from both the Septuagint and
Theodotion’s translation of Daniel 7, as Randel Helms (Gospel Fictions, 1988) has shown. And then what is left?
Habermas says Dodd valued John
20:19-21 above the parallel Luke 24:36-49, though I think the evidence points
to John’s version being a redaction of Luke’s (and not just of the “underlying
tradition” as apologists would prefer, trying to maintain some semblance of the
old notion of the gospels being independent reports). John has omitted Luke’s
redactional material in Luke 24:44-49, retaining only a paraphrase of the Great
Commission (“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”). And let’s get it
straight: vv. 44-49 are not “independent L tradition,” which is to appropriate
source criticism as apologetics. No, Luke just made it up, as one can see from
the material’s similarity to the speech in 24:25-27 as well many of the
speeches in Acts, also Lukan compositions (see Earl Richard, Acts 6:1-8:4. The Author’s Method of
Composition, 1978; Marion L. Soards, The
Speeches in Acts: Their Content, Context, and Concerns, 1994).
But beyond this, John has edited
Luke so that Jesus no longer offers just his (corporeal) hands and feet, but now his wounded (only in John) hands and
side. This fits with John’s having added the piercing of Jesus’ side and
anticipates Doubting Thomas with the mention of nail holes and a chasm in the
side. All this uniquely Johannine redaction rewrites the story in order to
suppress a current reading of Luke’s story in which Jesus is understood to have
survived crucifixion, evaded death and means to show the disciples that, like
Mark Twain’s, the reports of his death are premature. In fact, this way of
reading Luke’s story makes it remarkably similar to the episode in
Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana
(also supposedly based on local oral tradition as well as eyewitness memoirs!) in
which the sage vanished from the court of Domitian, where he was up on capital
charges, to reappear across the Mediterranean among his astonished disciples,
who naturally take him for the ghost of their presumably late master. He
stretches forth his hands and invites them to examine his corporeal flesh! Subsequently
he ascends into heaven alive, as also in Luke. Or so some read Luke in John’s
day, and that is why the latter sought to reinforce the real death of Jesus
with spear-thrusts and nail wounds. Let’s take stock: John’s version, far from
being straightforward reporting, is a redacted version of Luke’s which is
already redacted and embodies a common Hellenistic epiphany theme attested also
in Philostratus. You can hold your breath and keep quoting C.S. Lewis about how
none of this smacks of mythology, or you can stop citing authorities and
examine the matter for yourself.
Are the remaining gospel
resurrection accounts free of mythological traits, as Habermas suggests Dodd
contended? Hardly! In the Emmaus Road
story, we have another epiphany mytheme, closely matched in an Asclepius story
predating Luke by centuries. In that one, frustrated seekers of a miracle in Asclepius’
temple return home and are met on the way by a concerned stranger who hears
their sad tale, performs the desired healing, reveals himself, and vanishes.
The empty tomb tale itself is clearly cut from the same cloth as the numerous
apotheosis stories discussed by Charles L. Talbert (What Is a Gospel? The Genre of the Canonical Gospels, 1977), in
which a famous sage or hero mysteriously vanishes, companions search for the
body, can find no trace, and are assured by an angel or heavenly voice that he
has been raptured by the gods, henceforth to be worshipped. The Doubting Thomas
story closely parallels one from Philostratus in which a stubborn young
disciple is the sole hold-out against belief in immortality. His brethren are
startled to witness the fellow having a vision in which Apollonius manifests
himself from heaven for the sake of the doubter who henceforth doubts no more.
The farewell to Mary Magdalene in John 20 is highly reminiscent of the last
words of the departing angel Raphael to Tobias and Sarah in Tobit chapter 12,
as Helms has noted. The miraculous catch of fish in the Johannine Appendix ,
like its pre-resurrection cousin in Luke 5, stems directly from a Pythagoras
story in which the vegetarian sage wins the forfeit lives of a shoal of fish by
preternaturally “guessing” the number of them caught in the nets. The idea that
these stories do not smack of mythology is just palpably absurd. Rather than
functioning as an argument on behalf of faith, the claim has by now itself
become an article of faith, so drastically does it contradict all manner of
evidence.
Is there a worse example of the
fallacy of special pleading, the double standard, than to dismiss all these
mythical stories from other ancient religions and to claim that in the sole case
of the gospels they are all suddenly true? Laughable in the one case,
convincing in the other?
Truth or Method
And let’s not miss Habermas’s gambit here. First he
recommends Dodd’s judgment that at least 2 or maybe 2 ½ of the gospel
resurrection stories are, if not factually true, at least based on early
story-telling. That is what one might call damning with faint praise on Dodd’s
part. But it is good enough for Habermas. And then Habermas says those stories
not taken seriously by Dodd are to be taken seriously anyhow. His agenda is
clear. Because he is a spin-doctor on behalf of inerrantism (the real
presupposition underlying all this blather), he has never met a resurrection
story he doesn’t like, and if you (or Dodd) don’t like this one, maybe you’ll
buy that one. Habermas himself obviously cares nothing for the judgment of the
critical scholars he cites except that he may use them cosmetically in a
warmed-over piece of fundamentalist apologetics.
Habermas will take what he can get
from mainstream scholars, at least those of yesteryear who are nearer orthodoxy
anyway. This is clearest in his nose-count of scholars lining up in favor of the
“heavenly telegram” or “objective vision” theory of the supposed Easter
experiences. Taken on its own, this version of resurrection belief is abhorrent
to Habermas because it amounts to an “Easter docetism,” a non-fleshly
resurrection. That isn’t good enough for Habermas, and he finally takes refuge
with in pious equivocation of John A.T. Robinson: “a body identical yet
changed, transcending the limitations of the flesh yet capable of manifesting
itself within the order of the flesh. We may describe this as a ‘spiritual’ (1
Cor. 15:44) or ‘glorified’ (cf. 1
Cor. 15:43; Phil. 3:21) body… so
long as we do not import into these phrases any opposition to the physical as
such” (cited on p. 273). What specious clucking! We may say half-fish,
half-fowl, or anything else we may fancy, as long as we stonewall and insist
that the result is not a matter of docetism. As if Robinson has not just given
a good working definition of docetism: the doctrine of only apparent fleshly
reality, the polymorphousness of a divine being who can change forms precisely
because he has no true physical form!
It all comes down to saying the proper shibboleth when you get to the river
bank. Coherent meaning is strictly secondary, if even that. How pathetic. The
poor apologist is forever engaged in a bruising game of dodge-ball, imagining
he has vindicated the Bible just because he has contrived a way of never having
to admit he was wrong.
Less Real than an Hallucination
Gary Habermas thinks to convince us that the earliest
disciples did see something,
something that walked like the Risen Jesus, talked like the Risen Jesus, and
therefore must have been the Risen Jesus. He thinks those theologians who posit
“objective hallucinations,” i.e., true but intrapsychic visions sent by God,
are headed in the right direction, but he wants finally to quell all talk of
hallucinations. Slippery ground, you know. So he rehearses the standard
arguments against the resurrection appearances of the gospels being
hallucinations. This formula argument, unvarying no matter which apologist
dusts it off, is the kind of instrument apologists like Habermas think Paul was
using and bequeathing in 1 Corinthians 15:3-11. They are making Paul over in
their own image.
Hallucinations are not shared by groups.
Then I guess Habermas accepts the historicity of the dancing of the sun in the
sky at Fatima. Plenty of people saw that, too. The disciples could not have been
hallucinating, since such visions come at the behest of the longing of
mourners, who thus have their dreams fulfilled. But the disciples are shown
skeptical of the reality of the Risen Jesus. Come on: by now Habermas must
have learned from those “critical scholars” whose opinions he professes to
respect so much that the skepticism element is simply a common plot-prop in any
miracle story. It in no way marks the story as eyewitness testimony. To even
argue that way reveals that Habermas and his colleagues are mired in the
eighteenth century when these arguments were first framed: they were arguments
against Rationalistic Protestants who denied supernatural causation but
believed in the accuracy of the gospels! Only against such convenient opponents
does it make any sense to take for granted that the gospel scenes are
historically accurate and so the implied causation must be miraculous!
Hallucinations are the stock in trade of weirdoes,
and there is no reason to think the disciples were all weirdoes. Oh no?
People who abandoned their jobs to follow an exorcist so they could get a piece
of the action when the Millennium dawned? Fanatics eager to call down the
lightning bolts of Jehovah upon inhospitable Samaritans? Not exactly your
average Kiwanis Clubber or Methodist, I’d say. People would not die as martyrs for mere hallucinations. Well,
sure, as long as they didn’t realize that’s what they were! People are not changed from cringing cowards
to men who turn the world upside down by mere hallucinations. How do we
know? And besides, the New Testament itself attributes the evangelistic zeal of
the apostles not to the resurrection appearances but to the infilling of the
Spirit at Pentecost, seven weeks later!
But the
salient point is this: Habermas is still locking horns (in the mirror) with the
eighteenth-century Protestant Rationalists when he simply assumes we know that
the earliest Christians were the named people in the gospels and Acts who did
the deeds and said the words depicted in those texts. But as Mack says, these
stories are themselves the final products of a myth-making tendency in some
quarters, and not all, of early Christianity. They represent the end result of one
kind of Christian faith, not the root and foundation of all Christian faith.
There is not only no particular reason to think the gospel Easter narratives or
the 1 Corinthians 15 list preserve accurate data on the Easter morning
experiences. There is not any particularly compelling evidence to suggest that
the stories even go back to anyone’s experiences. They are one and all mythic
and literary in nature. Or they sure look like it, and there’s nothing much on
the other side of the scale.