[Dialogue] 12/24/09, Spong: The Origins of the New Testament, Part X: Resurrection According to Paul – I Corinthians

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A Message from Bishop Spong
As Christmas dawns we pause to see the vision of peace on earth among all that God has made and to commit ourselves anew to work to enhance our common humanity. It is my prayer for the New Year that the religious divisions that have so deeply marked human history and still today set us against our neighbor can be swept aside as the necessary prelude to that peace we all seek. I send you my best wishes. 

– John Shelby Spong





Thursday December 24, 2009 

The Origins of the New Testament
Part X: Resurrection According to Paul — I Corinthians

The first written account that we have of the Easter event in the Bible — Paul addressing the congregation in Corinth around the year 54-55 — gives us material that is both scanty and provocative. In order to understand his meaning fully, we need to cleanse our minds of the traditional Easter content found in the gospels. When Paul wrote, no gospel existed. Indeed Paul died without ever knowing that there was such a thing as a gospel. To go where this column needs to go I must not allow myself to be influenced by ideas of which Paul had never heard. So to understand what resurrection meant to Paul I seek to put myself and you, my readers, into the actual frame of reference that was present a generation before any gospel had entered history. 
To show how thorough this purge is we need to be aware that there is in Paul's writing no hint of a special tomb in a special garden owned by one named Joseph of Arimathea, no account of a stone that had been placed against the mouth of this tomb, no mention of either a messenger or an angel making the resurrection announcement and no reference to women coming to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week, bringing spices to anoint him. Paul has no narrative detail such as the setting Matthew employs on a mountaintop in Galilee, which enabled the raised Jesus to give the divine commission. He reveals no knowledge of Luke's narrative of the two disciples walking to the village of Emmaus who are overtaken by a stranger, who turns out to be Jesus, or of John's narrative that focused on a resurrection appearance with Thomas absent, his subsequent doubt and his later ecstatic words, "My Lord and my God." Paul only provides a list of those to whom he claims this raised Christ was manifested. In Paul, there are no supernatural signs accompanying either Jesus' crucifixion or his resurrection. Paul knows nothing about the supposed darkness of the sun from 12 noon to 3:00 p.m. on the day of the crucifixion, of which all the gospels take notice. He mentions no earthquakes, no Eucharistic context for the resurrection and no cosmic ascension, all of which play a large role in the various gospel narratives. If these things were part of the original Easter story then we must conclude that Paul was either not interested in or aware of them, or we must raise the distinct possibility that these traditions were not part of the original Christian story but were developed after Paul's death and thus are not historical at all. As these realizations dawn, the traditional reading of the resurrection stories, as if they are literal recollections, begins to fade as realistic possibilities. Paul thus provides us with the earliest glimpse we have into primitive Christianity and it is quite revealing, even troubling, since it chal lenges what has become "common Christian wisdom."
When Paul finally gets around to listing the key witnesses to whom, he asserts, the raised Christ had made himself "manifest," we enter a world of mystery and intrigue. Even Paul's list calls most of our pious Easter conclusions into question.
Was the resurrection of Jesus a physical event that took place within the boundaries of time, an event that could be documented as a literal, observable, historical occurrence? I do not think so. Paul actually asserts in the letter to the Romans (written some four years after I Corinthians) that it was in the resurrection itself that God "designated" Jesus to be "the Son of God." By the standards of the Nicene theology of the 4th century, Paul was thus a heretic, for he asserts that God raised Jesus into the status of being the divine son only at the resurrection. This attitude would later be called "Adoptionism" and was condemned by a future church council as an "impaired" understanding of Jesus. Our study, therefore, begins to force us to probe a far deeper mystery, that is the nature of Jesus, himself.
When Paul gets around to listing his witnesses, he begins with Cephas. Cephas was the Aramaic nickname for the disciple whose given name was Simon. Tradition suggested that Jesus had called him "the Rock." The word for rock in Greek is "petros," so Peter was his Greek nickname. The word for rock in Aramaic is "kepha," so Cephas became his Aramaic nickname. Paul always called Peter "Cephas." There is nothing unusual about Cephas being listed first. Simon was generally regarded as the head of the disciple band, but one wonders whether this was a reading back into history of the role that Simon played in the life of the early church and thus in the resurrection drama. We will never know for sure, but the primacy of Peter is a note present throughout the gospel writing period. In Mark, the messenger of the resurrection says to the women, "Go tell the disciples and Peter." Peter is the one portrayed as making the confession that Jesus is the Christ at Caesarea Philippi. Peter is the one for whom Jesus says he will pray that "when you are converted, you will strengthen the brethren."
Next on Paul's list is "the twelve." The designation "the twelve" is fascinating for two reasons. First, while the number twelve for the disciples is a constant in the gospels, they do not agree on who constituted that body. Mark and Matthew have one list. Luke and Acts have another. John does not ever provide a list of the twelve but he refers to people not on any other list, like Nathaniel, whom he portrays as clearly at the center of the Jesus movement. It is quite possible that the number twelve was a more important symbol than were the actual people who constituted the twelve. The second fascinating thing about Paul's use of the designation "the twelve" is that Judas is clearly still one of them. Paul quite obviously had never heard of the tradition that one of the twelve was a traitor. The betrayal involving Judas Iscariot thus also appears not to have been an original part of the Christian story. When Judas does appear in the gospels, he is a literary composite of all of the traitors in Jewish scriptures, which hardly suggests that he was himself a person of history.
Next Paul says that the raised Jesus appeared to "500 brethren at once." There is nothing in any later gospel that provides any clue as to the content of this claim. An early 20th century New Testament scholar sought to establish a connection between the appearance to these 500 brethren at once and the Pentecost experience described in the book of Acts, but that is a huge stretch! This strange list will get even stranger as it gets longer.
Paul moves on to say that next the raised Jesus appeared to James. Who is this James? Is he James, the son of Zebedee; James, the son of Alphaeus; or James, the brother of the Lord? Those are the three "James" included in the pages of early Christian history. By a process of elimination, James, the brother of the Lord, appears to be the probable one. James, the son of Zebedee, was killed by King Herod in the early years of the Christian movement, according to the book of Acts (12:1). James, the son of Alphaeus, is a total unknown, never mentioned again in any Christian writing that we can locate beyond this inclusion on the list of twelve disciples. James, the brother of Jesus, however, was a major player in early Christian history. It is this James at whom Paul directs his anger in the Epistle to the Galatians. It is this James who appears to have been the leader of the Christians in Jerusalem when Peter departed on his missionary journeys. It is this James who insisted that Gentiles had to become Jews first before they could become Christians. The weight of scholarship suggests that this is the James to whom Paul is referring. The idea that Jesus had no brothers and sisters was born in a much later period of history, when the attempt was being made to prove that the mother of Jesus was a "perpetual virgin." Mark, the first gospel to be written, refers to Jesus' four brothers by name (Mk. 6:3): James, Joses, Judas and Simon. Mark further states that Jesus had at least two sisters, neither of whom in that patriarchal world was deemed worthy of naming. So the intrigue deepens.
The next name on Paul's list only adds to that mystery. "Then," says Paul, "he appeared to all the apostles." Who are they? He has already mentioned the twelve. This must be a different group. Paul was not given to vain repetition. A distinction between "the twelve" and "the apostles" was clear to Paul, but it had disappeared by the time of the gospels.
The final name on the list is the most fascinating of all. "Last of all," Paul writes, "as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." Paul was making the startling claim that he too had been a witness to the resurrection and that his resurrection experience was identical to the experience that everyone else on his list had, except that his was last.
How much later would "last" be? The early 20th century church historian Adolf Harnack made a study of this and came to the conclusion that the conversion of Paul could not have happened any earlier than one year or any later than six years following the crucifixion. No one has challenged that finding. If that is accurate, as I believe it is, then we have to conclude that Paul understood the resurrection very differently from the way it is portrayed in the later gospels. For Paul, the resurrection was not an act of a dead man walking out of a tomb and back into the world. It was not the physical resuscitation of a three-days-dead body. A resuscitated formerly deceased body does not wait around for one to six years to make another dramatic appearance. Even St. Luke recognized this when he placed the ascension of Jesus forty days after the first Easter, at which time, he states, the appearances ceased. Resurrection thus clearly meant something different to Paul in the early years of the Christian Church. By the time the gospels were written (71-100 CE) the idea of resurrection had evolved until it had become quite physical and stories were told about the resurrected Jesus walking, talking, eating, drinking and interpreting scripture in a physically functioning, resuscitated body. That, however, is clearly not Paul's understanding. What, then, did the resurrection mean to Paul? Can we ever recover that original meaning of Easter? We can try and I will seek to do that in next week's column. 

– John Shelby Spong
 



Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong


Charles Brittain from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, writes:
I am a progressive Christian, one who follows your scholarship and that of my pastor. In fact, you have visited our church and I have heard you speak in person. It was a wonderful experience for me. The problem I'm having at this present holiday season is that the scholarship and the traditional Christmas music and the visuals are not in agreement with each other. I feel that I abandon my intellectual knowledge when I participate in the traditional forms of Christmas liturgy and imagery. Can you suggest how that I may enjoy both the scholarship and the traditions of Christmas without feeling conflicted?
Charles Brittain from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, writes:
I am a progressive Christian, one who follows your scholarship and that of my pastor. In fact, you have visited our church and I have heard you speak in person. It was a wonderful experience for me. The problem I'm having at this present holiday season is that the scholarship and the traditional Christmas music and the visuals are not in agreement with each other. I feel that I abandon my intellectual knowledge when I participate in the traditional forms of Christmas liturgy and imagery. Can you suggest how that I may enjoy both the scholarship and the traditions of Christmas without feeling conflicted?



Dear Charles, 
Thank you for your question, which is perfect for the column that goes out on Christmas Eve. There is no doubt that most people have literalized the images that Matthew and Luke have in their birth stories of Jesus (See Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2), but I do believe it is quite clear that neither Matthew nor Luke thought of them as literal events. The great majority of biblical scholars share that perspective. 
The facts are that stars do not travel across the sky so slowly that wise men can keep up with them; angels do not break through the midnight sky to sing to hillside shepherds; and human beings do not follow stars to pay homage to a newborn king of a foreign nation, especially when the same gospel that tells us this story also tells us that Jesus was the son of a carpenter. To continue this train of thought, no real head of state, including King Herod, would deputize eastern Magi that he had never seen before to be his CIA to bring him a report of this threat to his throne. That is the stuff of fairy tales. 
A star does not lead magi down a wagon track of a road six miles from Jerusalem and then bathe the house in which the baby lies with heavenly light to show these Magi where the child they seek is to be found. Wise men do not bring gifts that symbolize kingship (gold), divinity (frankincense) and suffering (myrrh) that will mark the life of this infant. No one is that prescient. 
Virgins do not conceive except in mythology, of which there were many examples in the Mediterranean world. Kings do not order people to return to their ancestral home for enrolling for taxation. There were 1000 years between David and Joseph, or some 50 generations. David had multiple wives and concubines. In 50 generations, the descendants of David would number in the billions. If they had all returned to Bethlehem, there would be no wonder that there was no room at the inn! 
A man does not take his wife, who is "great with child," on a 94-mile donkey ride from Nazareth to Bethlehem so that the expected messiah can be born in David's city. One lay Roman Catholic woman theologian said of that account, "Only a man who had never had a baby could have written that story!" No king slaughters all the boy babies in a town trying to get rid of a pretender to his throne, especially if everyone in that town would have known exactly which house it was over which the star had stopped and into which the Magi had entered. The whereabouts of the "pretender" to Herod's throne would not have been hard to identify if this were a literal story that really happened. 
Certainly, both Matthew and Luke were aware that they were using these stories to try to interpret the power of God experienced in the adult life of Jesus of Nazareth. Matthew drew his wise men story out of Isaiah 60, where kings were said to come on camels "to the brightness of God's rising." They came bringing gifts of gold and frankincense. Matthew expanded this story with details drawn from other biblical narratives like the visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon and the truckload of spices (myrrh) that she brought with her (see I Kings 10) and the story of Balaam and Balak from Numbers 22-24 in which a star in the East plays a prominent role. Traditional Jewish writings also used a star in the sky to announce the births of its great heroes, Abraham, Isaac and Moses. 
Matthew wrapped his interpretation around the well-known story of Moses. That is why he repeated the story of Pharaoh killing the boy babies in Egypt at the time of Moses' birth, transforming it to be a story of Herod killing the boy babies in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus' birth. 
What these narratives were designed by the gospel writers to proclaim are:

Human life could not have produced the presence of God that people believed they had met in Jesus. 
The importance of his birth was symbolized by having it announced with heavenly signs, a star in Matthew and angels in Luke. 
In the life of Jesus, they believed that heaven and earth had come together and that divinity and humanity had merged. 
Messiah for the Jews had many facets. Messiah had to be both a new Moses and the heir to the throne of David. The Moses claim was in the story of how Jesus was taken by Joseph down to Egypt so that God could call him as God had called Moses out of Egypt. The heir to David was the reason his birth was located in David's place of birth (Bethlehem) instead of in Nazareth, where Jesus was in all probability born. 
This Jesus draws the whole world to himself, even the Gentile world of the Magi as well as the humble lives of the shepherds.
These are the interpretive details of the Christian myths. All of them came into the Christian faith only in the 9th decade. None of them is original to the memory of Jesus. Neither Paul nor Mark had ever heard of them. John, the last gospel to be written, must have known of these birth traditions, but he doesn't include them and, on two occasions, calls Jesus the son of Joseph (see John Chapters 1 and 6). 
Given these pieces of data, there is no way the authors of the Christmas stories in the Bible thought they were writing literal history. They were interpreting the meaning they found in Jesus. As long as we understand that, I see no reason why we can't sing, "While shepherds watched their flocks by night" or "O, little town of Bethlehem" even if there were no shepherds who attended Jesus' birth and the probability is that he was born in Nazareth, which is what the first gospel Mark assumes. 
As far as I know, adults don't believe there is a literal North Pole inhabited by a jolly elf named Santa Claus, who harnesses his toy-laden sled to his reindeer in order to bring gifts to all of the children of the world on Christmas Eve. Yet we still sing, "Rudolf, the red-nosed reindeer" and "Santa Claus is coming to town" without twisting our minds into intellectual pretzels. 
My suggestion is that you separate fantasy from history and then enter into and enjoy the fantasy of the season. Dream of Peace on Earth and good will among men and women, and then dedicate yourself to bringing that vision into being. In that way you will understand the intentions of the gospel writers. 
Thanks for writing. Enjoy the holidays, and Merry Christmas.

– John Shelby Spong






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