Gary R.
Habermas’s “The Resurrection Appearances of Jesus” In R. Douglas
Geivett and Gary R. Habermas, eds.,
In Defense of
Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History.
Downers
Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997
Reviewed by Robert M. Price
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 would
equally have nipped in the bud the bold, open-ended investigations 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, but (Arthur Drews, Winsome Munro, R.
Joseph Hoffmann, William O. Walker, J.C. O’Neill, G.A. Wells) have
spotlighted the appearance list in 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as a later,
post-Pauline interpolation into the text, an alternate explanation for
all the non-Pauline linguistic features Habermas invokes as evidence
that Paul is quoting early tradition. 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 H. 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.