When people died they stayed dead, in first-century Palestine just as much as in the technological twentieth century. Jesus' followers weren't expecting him to die in the first place; when he did, they certainly weren't expecting him to rise again. Yet they said, loud and clear, that that was what had happened.Why did Christianity ever get going anyway? There were other Jewish would-be messiahs and revolutionaries within a hundred years of Jesus’ life (Judas the Galilean and Simeon ben-Kosiba, among others). A leader would gain a following, people would proclaim him to be Messiah, and then he would be hunted down and killed by the occupying forces. Every time, the movement would die with the leader.
Original Jesus, 72
But the Jesus movement didn’t die with the crucifixion of Jesus. His followers kept following him. They didn’t even visit his grave to pray and grieve (with the exception of that first Sunday), as would be custom in Jewish culture.
Rather than going back to their old lives or looking for a new Messiah (perhaps in Jesus’ brother James?), Jesus’ followers were emphatic that Jesus was the Messiah. Three days after his execution and burial, they said, Jesus was raised to bodily life again, leaving an empty tomb behind him. The current Jewish understanding of a final resurrection at the end of the age left little room for a single person coming back to life in the middle of history. The last thing they would have expected was for Jesus to be resurrected.
The accounts we have are "mostly quite breathless and artless" (p. 72), more like eye witness sketches than carefully planned stories. They knew that it had happened, and that it would change everything. The resurrection meant that the kingdom of God had come to birth, that the real return from exile had happened, and that evil had been defeated. They, and others, had to go on taking Jesus seriously. The victory that Jesus had won over evil and death (which is the good news, the gospel) must be taken to the ends of the earth.
Biblical Text: Luke 23:33-38, 44-56; 24:1-12
Embedded Questions:
- After Jesus’ execution, why didn’t Jesus’ followers give up or find a new messiah?
- Why did they think he was the Messiah after all?
- Why didn’t the story end when Jesus was crucified?
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2 comments:
"The accounts we have are "mostly quite breathless and artless" (p. 72), more like eye witness sketches than carefully planned stories. They knew that it had happened..."
The accounts of Mark? The accounts of Luke? The Accounts of Paul? "Eye-witnesses"?
"They" (who?) "knew that it happened"? The Greeks?
No Jew, during the infamous crucifixion, ever knew or saw or even heard of "Christ"... only we latter-day people 'suppose' the Holy Gospels to be 'true'...
A comment! I must say, I'm quite "breathless" myself. There's a first for everything. :)
This particular blog (so far) is intended as a filler for a group that meets at my house and is currently studying The Original Jesus (Tom Wright). This book (and this post) doesn't intend to presume that the Gospel accounts are true, though eventually we will get around to that question and attempt to ask of history: where do the gospels we have come from? are they reliable? How are they to be read?
Irregardless, it is clear that the earliest followers of Jesus (who were Jews) did "know" that the resurrection happened. Why else after the crucifixion did they risk their lives on the notion that their revolutionary leader was in fact Messiah and Lord? Being from Galilee, they would have been very familiar with what had happened to Judas the Galilean... and his followers. Rome didn't like competition. I would have been scared for my life if I was an early Jesus follower. Surely I wouldn't have made up a story to start a religion.
The resurrection stories we have in the Gospels do read very much like eye-witness accounts, having not even been very well tidied up. That's not to say that the person recording them was an eye witness. But they were recording the story as it was reported by people who saw it.
Obviously Jesus' public career was short. I don't think he was known as "Christ" (anointed one, Messiah) by many during his lifetime, though (given the expectancies at the time) I suspect many Jews who heard him speak or saw him perform a miracle may have asked to themselves "could this be the one we've been waiting for?"
If you really have interest in this question I'd highly recommend picking up this book (The Original Jesus). Tom (N.T.) Wright also has some more scholarly writings that get more in depth (The Challenge of Jesus; Christian Origins and the Question of God series).
Gotta head for work. Peace!
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