How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee (50 page)

  
4
.
  
Historians have had numerous debates about the chronology of Paul’s life, but it is reasonably clear that he became a follower of Jesus two or three years after Jesus’s death, based on the chronological details he provides in some of his letters, especially in Gal. 1–2, where he writes such things as “three years later” and “after fourteen years.” When one crunches the numbers, it appears relatively certain that if Jesus died around the year 30, Paul became his follower around the year 32 or 33.

  
5
.
  
Daniel A. Smith,
Revisiting the Empty Tomb: The Early History of Easter
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 3.

  
6
.
  
For someone who wants to take the account as historical, the best solution is that Joseph was acting out of a sense of piety, wanting to provide a decent burial for someone—even an enemy—because that was the “right” thing to do. But nothing in Mark’s account leads to this suggestion, so within the narrative itself, where the burial tradition comes on the heels of the trial tradition, it appears to create an anomaly.

  
7
.
  
Bruce Metzger, “Names for the Nameless in the New Testament: A Study in the Growth of Christian Tradition,” in Patrick Granfield and Josef A. Jungmann, eds.,
Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten
, 2 vols. (Münster: Verlag Aschendorff, 1970), 1:79–99.

  
8
.
  
John Dominic Crossan, “The Dogs Beneath the Cross,” chap.6 in
Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography
(San Francisco: HarperOne, 1994).

  
9
.
  
Cited in Martin Hengel,
Crucifixion
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 76.

10
.
  
Translation from
The Works of Horace
, Project Guttenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14020/14020-h/14020-h.htm#THE_FIRST_BOOK_OF_THE_EPISTLES_OF_HORACE.

11
.
  
Cited in Hengel,
Crucifixion
, 54.

12
.
  
Translation from Robert J. White,
The Interpretation of Dreams: Oneirocritica by Artemidorus
(Torrance, CA: Original Books, 1975).

13
.
  
Hengel,
Crucifixion
, 87.

14
.
  
Quoted in Crossan, “Dogs,” 159.

15
.
  
Translation of Charles Sherman,
Diodorus Siculus
, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1952).

16
.
  
Translation of J. W. Cohoon and H. Lamar Crosby,
Dio Chrysostom
, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1940).

17
.
  
Translation of Clifford H. Moore and John Jackson,
Tacitus Histories
, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1931).

18
.
  
Translation of William Whiston,
The Works of Flavius Josephus
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979).

19
.
  
Crossan, “Dogs,” 158.

20
.
  
Translation of E. Mary Smallwood,
Legatio ad Gaium
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1961).

21
.
  
See, for example, Michael R. Licona,
The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach
(Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2010), 349–54.

  
1
.
  
My thanks to Eric Meyers, scholar of ancient Judaism and archaeologist of Palestine, from crosstown rival Duke, for providing this information in a private correspondence.

  
2
.
  
It is important to note: I am not disputing that Paul and others thought that Jesus was raised on the third day. I’m saying that this view—important because it was a fulfillment of scripture (see pp. 140–41)—may not have arisen until weeks or months later.

  
3
.
  
For the ancient idea that spirit was still made of “stuff,” see Dale B. Martin,
The Corinthian Body
(New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1995).

  
4
.
  
For a relatively brief overview, see my book
Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), chap.6. For the most up-to-date and authoritative treatment, see David Brakke,
The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2010).

  
5
.
  
Translation of James Brashler in James M. Robinson, ed.,
The Nag Hammadi Library in English
, 4th ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).

  
6
.
  
See my fuller discussion on pp. 305–7.

  
7
.
  
Dale C. Allison,
Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters
(New York: T & T Clark, 2005).

  
8
.
  
My friend Joel Marcus, New Testament scholar at Duke, has maintained that some apocalyptic Jews may have held an alternative view in which there would be a spiritual, not a physical, resurrection of the dead; he finds this alternative view in the book of
Jubilees
. If that is true, then this would have been very much the minority view among apocalypticists. And it is not in evidence in the teachings of Jesus, as is clear from his insistence that there will be “eating and drinking” in the kingdom and that people will be “cast out” of the kingdom, and so on. I scarcely need stress that if Jesus (like most apocalypticists) understood that the resurrection would be physical, this too would have been the view of his followers.

  
9
.
  
Richard P. Bentall, “Hallucinatory Experiences,” in Etzel Cardeña, Steven J. Lynn, and Stanley Krippner, eds.,
Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence
(Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2000), 86.

10
.
  
Michael R. Licona,
The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach
(Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2010); N. T. Wright,
The Resurrection of the Son of God
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).

11
.
  
Gerd Lüdemann,
The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry
(New York: Prometheus, 2004), 19.

12
.
  
Michael Goulder, “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision,” in Gavin D’Costa, ed.,
Resurrection Reconsidered
(Oxford: One World, 1996), 54–55.

13
.
  
Allison,
Resurrecting Jesus
, 298.

14
.
  
On visions of Mary, see pp. 198–199; on UFOs, see the fascinating study of Susan A. Clancy,
Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2005).

15
.
  
See Bentall, “Hallucinatory Experiences.”

16
.
  
Bentall, “Hallucinatory Experiences,” 102.

17
.
  
Allison,
Resurrecting Jesus
, pp. 269–82.

18
.
  
Bill Guggenheim and Judy Guggenheim,
Hello from Heaven!
(New York: Bantam, 1995).

19
.
  
See, for example, René Laurentin,
The Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary Today
(Dublin: Veritas, 1990; French original, 1988). The examples that I give below are all drawn from this book.

20
.
  
I should stress that Wiebe is not a religious fanatic on a mission. He is chair of the philosophy department at Trinity Western University and is a serious scholar. Still, at the end of the day, he thinks that something “transcendent” has led to some of the modern visions of Jesus that he recounts. In other words, they—or some of them—are veridical.

21
.
  
I am not saying that Paul necessarily made up the story of the five hundred himself; he may well have inherited it from an oral tradition. Moreover, there is no telling how traditions such as this come to be made up—but it happens all the time, even in our day and age. It is not always the result of someone “lying” about it. Sometimes stories just get exaggerated or invented.

22
.
  
See John J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” in James H. Charlesworth, ed.,
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
, vol.1,
Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), n. c2, 387.

23
.
  
In this case I am using the term
veridical
not only to mean that they saw “something” that was really there, but to mean that the something they saw really was Jesus.

24
.
  
Some manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke contain an account of Jesus’s ascension in 24:51. As I argue in my book
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament
, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011), that passage was probably added by scribes; it was not what Luke originally wrote.

  
1
.
  
See my book
Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
(San Francisco: HarperOne, 2011), 92–114.

  
2
.
  
For a standard scholarly treatment, see James D. G. Dunn,
Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation
, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 33–36.

  
3
.
  
You can find discussions of all these issues in any good critical commentary. Two of the most authoritative and hefty are Robert Jewett,
Romans: A Commentary
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), and Joseph Fitzmyer,
Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
(New Haven, CT: Anchor Bible, 1997).

  
4
.
  
See pp. 76–80.

  
5
.
  
Michael Peppard,
The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in Its Social and Political Context
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011).

  
6
.
  
Cited by Peppard,
Son of God
, 84.

  
7
.
  
Christiane Kunst,
Römische Adoption: Zur Strategie einer Familienorganisation
(Hennef: Marthe Clauss, 2005), 294; cited in translation by Peppard,
Son of God
, 54.

  
8
.
  
Larry W. Hurtado,
One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism
(London: SCM Press, 1988). A much fuller treatment can be found in his magnum opus,
Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003).

  
9
.
  
See Raymond Brown,
The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
(New York: Doubleday, 1993), 29–32.

10
.
  
See Dunn,
Christology in the Making
.

11
.
  
See Peppard,
Son of God
, 86–131.

12
.
  
See my brief discussion in
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), 158–61; for a full discussion at a scholarly level, see my book
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament
, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011), 73–79.

  
1
.
  
See pp. 59–61.

  
2
.
  
Charles A. Gieschen,
Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 27.

  
3
.
  
I should say that this view of Christ as the chief angel has not always been a popular one among New Testament scholars. In no small measure this is because Christ is never explicitly called an “angel” the way he is called “Son of Man,” “Lord,” “Messiah,” or “Son of God” in the New Testament. This is the view, for example, of D. G. Dunn,
Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation
, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 158. But more recent research has shown that in part the reason the view of Christ as a preexistent angelic being has not caught on more thoroughly is that researchers think that such a view is inadequately exalted for the early Christians. See, for example, Gieschen,
Angelomorphic Christology
, and Susan R. Garrett,
No Ordinary Angel: Celestial Spirits and Christian Claims About Jesus
(New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2008).

  
4
.
  
See the preceding note.

  
5
.
  
Gieschen,
Angelomorphic Christology
, and Garrett,
No Ordinary Angel
.

  
6
.
  
Garrett,
No Ordinary Angel
, 11.