In my judgment there are several incorrect assumptions embedded in this objection. I showed in the previous chapter that, according to Paul, the resurrection of Jesus, and resurrection more generally, was understood as the reembodiment of one who has died, not the resuscitation of a corpse.
The gospels, written decades after Jesus’ death, begin to connect the empty tomb and the disappearance of Jesus’ body to subsequent and immediate appearances of Jesus to his followers, even the same day, in Jerusalem, proving that he had been raised from the dead. But as we will see, these are late expansions of earlier tradition. What Mark only implies (“you will see him in Galilee”) is lavishly embellished by Luke, and John, but is now set in Jerusalem, on the Sunday after the crucifixion. Jesus walks around, wounds and all, eating meals and claiming he is still flesh and bones—directly contradicting Paul’s emphatic assertion that Jesus has become a “life-giving spirit”—embodied, yes, but not physical or material. It is a mistake to allow these later texts to frame our objections and take priority over earlier materials.
Whether the family and followers of Jesus knew immediately where Jesus had been reburied, or learned of the location later, they were not running around Jerusalem in that first week following Jesus’ death proclaiming he had been raised. In fact, a critical reading of our sources will show that there were no sightings of Jesus in Jerusalem at all, but only in Galilee, other than perhaps the single experience of Mary Magdalene (John 20:11–18; Matthew 28:9–10).15 The matter of a first appearance to Mary Magdalene is always possible but she is not included in the list of first witnesses that Paul relates—perhaps since appealing to the testimony of a woman was considered less than convincing, as we will see below.
SORTING THROUGH THE SIGHTINGS OF JESUS
Sometimes clues show up from the most unexpected quarters. In 1886 a fragmentary eighth-century A.D. copy of the lost Gospel of Peter was found buried in the grave of a monk in Egypt. Eusebius, a fourth-century church historian, had mentioned its existence but regarded it with disfavor.16 It is written in the first person, claiming to be by Peter, but scholars generally place it in the late second century A.D. It narrates Jesus’ death and resurrection and scholars have debated without resolution whether it is dependent on our New Testament gospels or represents an independent tradition. It has a highly legendary flavor to it, with quite a few fantastic embellishments, so whether it has much historical value is debatable. At the end of the text the author seems to retell his empty tomb story in a much more straightforward way, for a second time in the text, but this time almost identical to Mark. It is as if he is passing along two versions, one highly fantastic and legendary, and the other more sober and realistic. In this second version Mary Magdalene and the other women arrive at Jesus’ tomb, finding it empty, and as in Mark, they encounter a young man who tells them Jesus is risen, and they flee the tomb frightened. The critical final lines of the text, before it breaks off, read:
Now it was the last day of unleavened bread and many went to their homes because the feast was at an end. But we, the twelve disciples of the Lord, wept and mourned and each one, grieving for what had happened, returned to his own home. But I, Simon Peter, and my brother Andrew took our nets and went to the sea. And there was with us Levi, the son of Alphaeus, whom the Lord . . . 17
This text is a bombshell in its implications. The Passover festival lasts for eight days and according to this text, rather than running around Jerusalem celebrating various appearances of Jesus, Peter and the rest of the disciples spent that week in Jerusalem weeping and mourning. At the end of the eight-day feast they returned home, to Galilee, still grieving for what had happened. Each went to his home, and Peter, with his brother Andrew, returned to their fishing business. This evidence—that the followers of Jesus returned home to Galilee in despair and mourning, and even went back to their businesses, and only sometime later, in Galilee, began to have faith that Jesus had been raised from the dead—rings true with the rest of our evidence when put in proper chronological order. The body of Jesus, resting in a tomb in Jerusalem, was no threat to their faith that Jesus, though dead, had been vindicated by God and was indeed the Messiah they had hoped for.
That we even have such a text, running so counter to the reports of appearances of Jesus in Jerusalem the week following his death, given the subsequent embellishments of the gospels with multiple appearances of Jesus, is quite remarkable. The text also fits in with Mark, who mentions no appearances of Jesus, but also relates the tradition that the disciples returned to Galilee. It is more than likely that the Gospel of Peter, after this abrupt break, goes on to narrate a “sighting” of Jesus by Peter, Andrew, and the others on the Sea of Galilee, after they had returned to their fishing and given up hope.
Strangely, we have a version of this story tacked on to the end of the gospel of John—an extra chapter, 21, like an appendix, after the original text had clearly ended with chapter 20. It has been edited to read as if Jesus had already been appearing to the disciples in Jerusalem and now just showed up in Galilee. But it is clear that it reflects an entirely independent source, preserving a story very similar to the ending of the Gospel of Peter. Peter has returned to the Sea of Galilee with a few others and he has gone back to fishing. They are out in the boat when they think they see Jesus, distantly on the shore. The way the story is related, even though the author of John has elaborated and embellished it, shows that this tradition of a return to Galilee, and a resuming of the fishing business, was a persistent one.
Matthew follows Mark with his emphasis on Galilee as the place where the disciples first saw Jesus. What he relates is quite telling:
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him; but some doubted. (Matthew 28:16–17)
Presumably Matthew is associating a specific mountain as a place of visionary experience, much like his account in chapter 17 where Jesus appears as a transfigured shining being with Moses and Elijah. Many scholars have suggested that the account of the transfiguration, related also in Mark 9, is a misplaced resurrection story.18 But whether that is the case or not, what we learn here is that Matthew only knows a single story of Jesus appearing to his disciples. It takes place in Galilee—a “misty mountain” visionary experience—and some doubted!
If we put all our “sighting” evidence together in chronological order from all our sources, including the evidence we have surveyed from Paul, we get an interesting breakdown, and one can clearly see how the stories expand and develop. What follows is a basic summary.
Paul had his revelation of Christ approximately seven years after Jesus’ crucifixion. He claimed that he saw Jesus in a glorious heavenly body. Twice in his letter 1 Corinthians he equates his own experience with that of those who had seen Jesus earlier, based on traditions he had received: namely, Peter (Cephas), the Twelve, a group of five hundred at once, James, and the rest of the apostles: