The Resurrection Belief: Event or Process?

Sanders, E. P.  Jesus and Judaism.  Philadelphia: Fortress.  1985.  A study of Jesus' aims in their Jewish setting by one of the most influential critical historians of first-century Judaism, who offers no explanation of his own for the resurrection experiences.  This article uses it because Sanders first asked, in one sentence, whether Jesus' disciples would have outlasted John the Baptist's without the resurrection, and guessed not.

1. 1a.

   Page 240:  “What is unique is the result. But, again, we cannot know that the result springs from the uniqueness of the historical Jesus. Without the resurrection, would his disciples have endured longer than did John the Baptist's? We can only guess, but I would guess not.”  Page 320:  “I have no special explanation or rationalization of the resurrection experiences of the disciples. Their vividness and importance are best seen in the letters of Paul. They are, to my knowledge, unique in their effect.” ↩

Allison, Dale C. Jr.  The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History.  London: T&T Clark.  2021.  A 400-page study by a leading New Testament scholar who accepts that the disciples saw something and is critical of arguments on both sides.  It rewrites and more than triples his 2005 treatment, and adds chapters on the disciples' expectations, on cessation arguments, and on modern apparitions such as Zeitoun.  This article uses it as the current statement of Allison's views, including several places where he revised what he wrote in 2005.

1. 2a.

   Page 28:  “They do not, however, tell us when belief in his resurrection was born”. ↩

2. 2b.

   Page 29:  “Maybe the latter expression reflects the conviction that Jesus' tomb was found empty on the third day after his death”.  “that the first encounter with the risen Jesus took place then”.  Page 30:  “Perhaps, then, the specifications were not, at first, meant literally. Maybe their sense was rather "in a little while" or "without delay."”  Page 31:  “We can, however, reasonably infer that, very early on, some Christians found three-day language appropriate because, among other things, they believed that very little time elapsed between Jesus' crucifixion and his resurrection.”  The other options Allison lists on pages 29-30 are Hosea 6:2 or another passage of Scripture, a tradition of divine deliverance on the third day, a lost book, Israel's three days of mourning for Moses, proof that Jesus had really died, and a saying of Jesus. ↩ ↩

3. 2c.

   Page 35:  “These two verses construe Christ's resurrection as the harbinger and guarantee of the general resurrection, an event Paul associated with the parousia.” ↩

4. 2d.

   Page 58:  “Half of the Jewish texts from 200 BCE–100 CE that speak of an afterlife do so without mentioning resurrection”.  “why did Peter and his friends not affirm, in a manner reminiscent of Jub. 23:31, that while Jesus' bones rested for now in the earth, his spirit had been exalted in heaven?”  “This is not, however, what our sources report.” ↩

5. 2e.

   Page 133, note 94:  “Goulder, "Baseless Fabric," 56, is plainly wrong in asserting that "the norm" among Jews was a "spiritual resurrection" rather than a "physical resurrection."”  “Although there were multiple ways of imagining an afterlife, and different ways of imagining resurrected bodies, "resurrection" habitually involved bodily remains”.  “Jub. 23:30-31, however, may supply an exception”.  The same note reports that James VanderKam's 2018 commentary on Jubilees reads 23:30-31 as a "resurrection" of spirits to heaven, and that John Granger Cook takes "they will rise" to mean earthly healing and prosperity. ↩ ↩

6. 2f.

   Page 147:  “The problem with this is that we have no good evidence for belief in a nonphysical resurrection in Paul, much less in the primitive Jerusalem community.”  “Nowhere does he imply their natural dissipation.”  "Their" refers to human remains, which Allison says Paul expects to be transformed. ↩

7. 2g.

   Page 288:  “Yet the apostle says nothing about forty days, and the word, ἔσχατος, is his; it is not from his tradition.”  “there is little reason to take the meaning to be "last of all (for all time)" as opposed to "last of all (in this series)" or (as an expression of humility) "least of all."”  Footnote 16, which cites Fitzmyer and Lindemann for the same reading. ↩ ↩

8. 2h.

   Page 288:  “2 Cor. 12:8-9 reflects the apostle's belief that Jesus continued to speak to him”.  Footnote 16. ↩

9. 2i.

   Page 288:  “Even the New Testament itself, in its final book, written decades after Pentecost, tells of a certain John seeing and conversing with the risen Jesus (Rev. 1:9–3:22).” ↩

10. 2j.

    Page 289:  “it is impossible to hold that christic visions ceased to be reported after Pentecost or the first century. On the contrary, accounts through the centuries are legion, and they have continued into modern times.” ↩

11. 2k.

    Page 286:  “If those appearances [of the risen Jesus] were purely subjective, how can we account for their sudden, rapid, and total cessation?”  Allison quoting F. W. Farrar's Life of Christ as the first of four examples of the cessation argument in apologetic writing. ↩

12. 2l.

    Page 287:  “My best guess is that the writer thought of the appearances before Pentecost as encounters with Jesus on earth, the appearances after Pentecost as encounters with the heavenly Jesus.”  “One might, I suppose, contend that the appearances to Stephen and Paul are the exceptions that prove the rule. They do not, however, prove the rule. They rather negate it.” ↩

13. 2m.

    Page 287:  “The forty days in Acts stands by itself until Tertullian.” ↩

14. 2n.

    Page 287:  “Do these three estimates, which are close to each other, derive from attempts to include Paul's experience in the period of the appearances?”  Footnote 9, on the eighteen months, 550 days and 545 days. ↩

15. 2o.

    Page 291:  “I do not deny that early Christians at some point came to differentiate early experiences from later experiences. Yet this was not due to studied reflection on the phenomenological content of those experiences. It was rather the inevitable upshot of ecclesiastical development and the routinization of charisma.” ↩

16. 2p.

    Page 291:  “Once the church had taken off, once it had a primitive creedal statement about its birth, and once it had established leaders and a rudimentary hierarchy, later reports of seeing Jesus would unavoidably have been of secondary import and so understood as possessing a different character.” ↩

17. 2q.

    Page 291:  “Given that these are words from the experiencers themselves, on what grounds, other than religious partisanship, can one blithely discount them yet insist that the physical nature of the encounters in Luke 24 and John 20–21 distinguish them from all later experiences?”  The words referred to are modern reports of touching Jesus, quoted on the same page. ↩

18. 2r.

    Page 291:  “Nor can one contend that communal sightings appear only in the New Testament. Wiebe's collection includes two such accounts from the late 1950s. One involved approximately fifty”.  Page 292:  “people, the other about two hundred. Wiebe was able to interview multiple witnesses to the latter event.”  Wiebe is Phillip Wiebe, Visions of Jesus (1997). ↩

19. 2s.

    Page 182:  “the greatest of errors to suppose that legendary lore requires much time to mature; sometimes a legend is the product of a single day.”  “Renan may have been wrong about much, but he was not wrong about this.”  Allison quoting and endorsing Ernest Renan. ↩

20. 2t.

    Page 183:  “I introduced, in Chapter 2, Rudolf Pesch's proposal—which he later withdrew—regarding the origin of Easter faith.” ↩

21. 2u.

    Page 183:  “Pesch has not won many endorsements. Berger's evidence, on which he relied heavily, is more suggestive than demonstrative, in part because his primary sources are Christian.” ↩

22. 2v.

    Page 183:  “I remain undecided as to how to account for Mk 6:14-16, according to which some took Jesus to be John the Baptist risen from the dead.”  “the formulation (ἐγήγερται ἐκ νεκρῶν) is likely influenced by Christian language”.  “Perhaps the notice is the product of a desire to assimilate Jesus and the Baptist.”  Footnote 2. ↩

23. 2w.

    Page 193:  “Others, however, said that he would soon rise from the dead or return as the Messiah. Still others claimed him to be a spiritual presence they could sense. A few went even further, claiming that he had already been resurrected.”  Allison's summary of Simon Dein's Lubavitcher Messianism, on the followers of Rabbi Schneerson after 1994. ↩

24. 2x.

    Page 195:  “Jesus understood himself to be the future king of Israel”. ↩

25. 2y.

    Page 198:  “Jesus had a Naherwartung, and his premonitions of death followed by resurrection were, for him, about affliction in the tribulation of the latter days and vindication on the day of judgment.” ↩

26. 2z.

    Page 201:  “Yet we should be cautious here. We have only unsympathetic second-hand reports about these prophets and their followers.”  “maybe "the death of the leader brought an end to the movement, but all we really know is that it brought an end to the record of the movement in the history books."”  Footnote 114, on Theudas, the Egyptian, Athronges, Bar Kokhba and others.  The second quotation is Allison quoting Jake O'Connell. ↩

27. 2aa.

    Page 203:  “The same holds for those Lubavitchers who, immediately after the death of the Rebbe, claimed that he had not really died, or that his body was not in his grave, or that he had been resurrected. These were posits of faith unassisted by circumstances.”  “There were also accounts of seeing Jesus and the story of the empty tomb.” ↩

28. 2ab.

    Page 206:  “pre-Easter expectations alone did not precipitate proclamation of Jesus' resurrection. Certain events after Good Friday also made their contribution. Without those events, the cause of Jesus, like that of John the Baptist, might have continued, but its contours would surely have been very different from what we now find in the first Christian sources.” ↩

29. 2ac.

    Page 216:  “I suppose I could compose a little list like Paul's and regard it as evidential: Clifford passed away in the hospital, after which he communicated to Kris; then he appeared to David; then he appeared to Andrew and spoke with him; then he gave guidance to John, after which his presence made itself felt to Bill, Virginia, and Jane; and last of all he appeared to Emily; six of them are still alive, although two have died.”  Allison on the reports in his own family after his father's death. ↩

30. 2ad.

    Page 295:  “After that second appearance, the light was seen often, usually (at least for the remainder of 1968) two or three times a week.”  “The sightings continued off and on until 1971.” ↩

31. 2ae.

    Page 346:  “I know of no close phenomenological parallel to the series of likely events as a whole.” ↩

32. 2af.

    Page 346:  “Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man's presence plus the conversion vision of at least one hostile outsider.” ↩ ↩

33. 2ag.

    Page 356:  “Mix in the pre-Easter eschatological expectations of the disciples, the theft of Jesus' body, and a knowledge of how messianic movements, such as Chabad in our own day, can become theologically innovative in the light of unexpected events and, one might claim, there it is.”  “Apologists will reflexively protest, with justice, that such an explanation demands an extraordinary confluence of remarkable circumstances.”  Allison is sketching the combined explanation a skeptic could offer, not endorsing it. ↩

Lüdemann, Gerd.  The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry.  Amherst, NY: Prometheus.  2004.  A historical study of the resurrection of Jesus.  It translates and analyses the early Christian texts on the resurrection, from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians through the Gospels, and gives a chapter to what it calls a self-deception.  Lüdemann, a German New Testament scholar who left the Christian faith, is the most thorough skeptical analyst of these texts.  This article uses his own statement of the grief model:  Peter's vision from unsuccessful mourning, a chain reaction among the disciples, the five hundred as a mass ecstasy, and his dating of the Cephas report before Paul's first mission in Europe.

1. 3a.

   Page 11:  “An examination of the historicity of Jesus' resurrection is called for because according to early Christian testimony it is an event in time and space.” ↩

2. 3b.

   Page 32:  “since the report of the christophany to Cephas was handed down to Paul before he came to Europe, it is chronologically at least as old as the formula listed under a) 'God raised Jesus from the dead,' which indeed goes back even before the time of the composition of the first letter to the Thessalonians (see 1 Thess. 1:10).” ↩

3. 3c.

   Page 42:  “For that reason one may already at this point question the correctness of a literal understanding of "on the third day."”  His reason is that "on the third day" stands in parallel with "for our sins" in the formula. ↩

4. 3d.

   Page 70:  “Therefore one must assume that the formula used by Paul in 1 Cor. 15:3c-5 does not contain the notion of an empty tomb.”  “Paul thinks of the resurrection in bodily terms.”  “reasonable to assume that Paul considered Jesus' tomb to have been empty”.  “Such a thesis is unconvincing”.  Lüdemann himself holds that Jesus' corpse decayed.  The thesis he calls unconvincing is that Paul believed in a bodily resurrection while the tomb stayed full. ↩

5. 3e.

   Page 81:  “One must understand the 'appearance to the more than five hundred brothers at one time' as the report of a mass ecstasy that took place in the early period of the community. One or more individuals provided the stimulus for it. Such an explanation fits in well with what has been worked out so far, namely, that the first appearance to Peter was the impulse to further appearances among the disciples.” ↩ ↩

6. 3f.

   Page 163, section Peter's 'Easter' encounter: the result of unsuccessful mourning.  Page 166:  It lists three factors:  “Jesus' death was violent, unexpected, and sudden”.  “the relationship between the disciples and Jesus was colored by a sense of guilt and profound ambivalence”.  “most of them had given up their work and homes and families to be with him.” ↩

7. 3g.

   Page 173:  “Not long after Good Friday, Peter experienced a vision of Jesus that included auditory features, and this event led to an extraordinary chain reaction.” ↩

8. 3h.

   Page 181:  “We know neither how long the disciples stayed in Galilee nor when their public appearance in Jerusalem began.” ↩

Rees, W. Dewi.  “The Hallucinations of Widowhood.”  British Medical Journal 4(5778):37–41.  1971.  A survey by a general practitioner of widowed people in an area of mid-Wales centred on Llanidloes, 293 of whom were interviewed about hallucinations of their dead spouse.  The article uses it for the finding that these experiences were most common during the first 10 years of widowhood and were rarely told to anyone.

1. 4a.

   Page 37, section Summary:  “227 widows and 66 widowers were interviewed”.  “Almost half the people interviewed had hallucinations or illusions of the dead spouse.”  “The hallucinations often lasted many years but were most common during the first 10 years of widowhood.”  “It was unusual for the hallucinations to have been disclosed, even to close friends or relatives.” ↩ ↩

2. 4b.

   Page 38, table IV:  All 293 interviewed: feels presence of deceased 115 (39.2%); sees deceased 41 (14.0%); hears deceased 39 (13.3%); speaks to deceased 34 (11.6%); touched by deceased 8 (2.7%). ↩

Dein, Simon.  “Bereavement related perceptions and transformation: psychological and religious aspects.”  Mental Health, Religion & Culture 27(8):822–837.  2024.  A 2024 journal article by Simon Dein.  It argues that bereavement-related perceptions fail to explain the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection.  Dein is a psychiatrist and anthropologist who has also done long fieldwork among Lubavitch Hasidim.  This article uses the review's report of the 1889 finding that grief experiences peak within a week of a loss and then fade, its quotation of Bergeron and Habermas, and its own conclusion against the bereavement explanation.

1. 5a.

   Section Bereavement-related perceptions:  “In 1882 The Society for Psychical Research demonstrated how experiences around bereavement were especially common from 'the sense of presence' fully formed visual apparitions. Several consistent themes emerged such as the experiences peaking within 24 hours to a week subsequent to the loss, and then steadily decreasing in the next year or so (Gurney & Myers, 1889).” ↩ ↩

2. 5b.

   Section Bereavement hallucinations and early Christianity:  Quoting Bergeron and Habermas 2015, page 23:  “Another matter concerns the first century Hebrew culture, where many Jews had a concept of resurrection at the end of time, but it was unheard of to imagine a near-term resurrection from death to physical life. The disciples, therefore, would not have naturally interpreted bereavement experiences as physical encounters with a resurrected Jesus. The premise that bereavement experiences formed the basis for the disciples' belief in Jesus' resurrection is indefensible.” ↩

3. 5c.

   Section Abstract:  “There follows a critical discussion of the role of bereavement hallucinations in the origins of early Christianity and more specifically visions of the resurrected Christ. Bereavement related perceptions fail to explain the appearances of Jesus post-resurrection.” ↩

Ehrman, Bart D.  How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.  New York: HarperOne.  2014.  A popular book by a leading agnostic New Testament scholar on how Jesus came to be called God.  It holds that some followers had visions of Jesus after his death and that belief in his resurrection came from them, without deciding whether the visions were veridical.  This article uses it as the clearest statement of a small, fast visions-and-storytelling model.

1. 6a.

   Page 192:  “My tentative suggestion is that three or four people—though possibly more—had visions of Jesus sometime after he died.” ↩

2. 6b.

   Page 192:  “Still, as the stories of Jesus's "appearances" were told and retold, of course, they were embellished, magnified, and even made up; so soon, probably within a few years, it was said that all of the disciples had seen Jesus, along with other people.”  The three people he names are Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene. ↩ ↩

Festinger, Leon et al.  When Prophecy Fails.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  1956.  A book by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter on what believers do when a prophecy fails.  The article uses it for Festinger's five conditions, under which believers who see a failed prophecy become more active in winning converts, and for his example of the Sabbataian movement.

1. 7a.

   Page 4:  “These five conditions specify the circumstances under which increased proselyting would be expected to follow disconfirmation.” ↩

2. 7b.

   Page 12:  “The Sabbataian movement strikingly illustrates the phenomenon we are concerned with: when people are committed to a belief and a course of action, clear disconfirming evidence may simply result in deepened conviction and increased proselyting.” ↩

Komarnitsky, Kris.  “Cognitive Dissonance and the Resurrection of Jesus.”  The Fourth R 27(5).  Sep 2014.  A short essay by the author of Doubting Jesus' Resurrection, written for a general audience in the Westar Institute's magazine.  It summarizes four modern cases of dissonance after failed prophecy, including the Millerites, the Sabbateans and Lubavitch, and argues that dissonance reduction could have produced the resurrection belief before any visions.  It is the clearest skeptical statement of the belief-first model.

1. 8a.

   Section conclusion:  “In short, cognitive dissonance may have given rise to the resurrection belief and then the appearance experiences followed only after the resurrection belief was in place.” ↩

2. 8b.

   Section conclusion:  “many other Jews before the time of Jesus must have experienced post-mortem bereavement hallucinations of lost loved ones, and yet there is no record of such people concluding that their lost loved ones had been resurrected from the dead.” ↩

Robinson, James M.  “Jesus: From Easter to Valentinus (or to the Apostles' Creed).”  Journal of Biblical Literature 101(1):5–37.  1982.  A journal article by James M. Robinson of Claremont Graduate School on the first hundred years of Christianity, about A.D. 30 to 130, the period in which the New Testament was written.  It does not take a side on whether Gnosticism began inside Christianity.  The article uses it for Robinson's own view that the original visualizations of the resurrection appearances were luminous and that the empty-tomb stories stress a physical body.

1. 9a.

   Page 7:  “The earliest accessible documentation as a point of departure is Paul. He conceives of the resurrection as bodily, but emphasizes change within the continuity of corporeality”. ↩

2. 9b.

   Page 10:  “Thus one may conclude that the original visualizations of resurrection appearances had been luminous, the experiencing of a blinding light, a heavenly body such as Luke reports Stephen saw”.  “Perhaps because these luminous appearances continued, as Stephen, Paul and John of Patmos attest, down through the first century A.D., and, as gnostic sources attest, their increasingly dubious interpretation continued down through the second.”  “the narrations of the empty tomb in the gospels tend to emphasize the continuity of the same body, lest the luminousness of the appearances suggest it was just a ghost, just religious experience.”  Page 7:  On Paul:  “He conceives of the resurrection as bodily, but emphasizes change within the continuity of corporeality”.  Page 11:  “if it is luminous, it is not bodily.” ↩ ↩

3. 9c.

   Page 10:  On Revelation 1:13-16:  “Although this appearance took place in the 90s (quite uninhibited by the Lucan doctrine that appearances ended with forty days), it has in common with Paul's much earlier but equally uninhibited luminous visualization of the resurrection in the 30s the fact that these are the only two resurrection appearances recorded by persons who themselves received the appearances”. ↩

Lüdemann, Gerd.  What Really Happened to Jesus? A Historical Approach to the Resurrection.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox.  1995.  A book that approaches the resurrection of Jesus as a question of history.  The article quotes its pages 80 and 81 for two of Lüdemann's claims:  that the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which he appeared to them, and that the stress on a physically perceivable risen Jesus developed later.

1. 10a.

   Page 80:  “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”  Page 81:  “The only thing that we can certainly say to be historical is that there were resurrection appearances in Galilee (and in Jerusalem) soon after Jesus' death. These appearances cannot be denied. But did the risen Jesus in fact reveal himself in them?” ↩

2. 10b.

   Page 80:  “For the emphasis on a reality of the risen Jesus which could be perceived with the senses developed only later, in order to make it possible to maintain the reality of the resurrection over against other assertions that Jesus was not raised at all, but was only a spirit or a phantom.” ↩

World English Bible.  n.d.  An English translation of the Bible.  The article quotes its wording for every verse it cites.

1. 11a.

   Verse 1 Corinthians 15:3-5:  “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” ↩

2. 11b.

   Verse 1 Corinthians 15:8:  “and last of all, as to the child born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also.” ↩ ↩

3. 11c.

   Verse 1 Corinthians 15:9:  “For I am the least of the apostles, who is not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the assembly of God.” ↩ ↩

4. 11d.

   Verse 1 Corinthians 9:1:  “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Haven't I seen Jesus Christ, our Lord?” ↩

5. 11e.

   Verse Acts 1:21-22:  “beginning from the baptism of John to the day that he was received up from us, of these one must become a witness with us of his resurrection.” ↩

6. 11f.

   Verse Acts 10:40-41:  “God raised him up the third day and gave him to be revealed, not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen before by God, to us, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” ↩ ↩

7. 11g.

   Verse John 20:29:  “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” ↩

8. 11h.

   Verse 1 Peter 1:8:  “whom, not having known, you love. In him, though now you don't see him, yet believing, you rejoice greatly”. ↩

9. 11i.

   Verse Acts 1:3:  “appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking about God's Kingdom.”  The ascension follows at Acts 1:9-11. ↩ ↩

10. 11j.

    Verse 2 Corinthians 12:1-2:  “I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who was caught up into the third heaven fourteen years ago”. ↩

11. 11k.

    Verse Acts 22:17-18:  “while I prayed in the temple, I fell into a trance and saw him saying to me, 'Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly”. ↩

12. 11l.

    Verse Acts 23:11:  “The following night, the Lord stood by him and said, "Cheer up, Paul”. ↩

13. 11m.

    Verse Acts 7:55-56:  “saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” ↩

14. 11n.

    Verse Mark 6:14:  “King Herod heard this, for his name had become known, and he said, "John the Baptizer has risen from the dead, and therefore these powers are at work in him.”  Verse Mark 6:16:  “But Herod, when he heard this, said, "This is John, whom I beheaded. He has risen from the dead.” ↩

15. 11o.

    Verse Mark 6:29:  “When his disciples heard this, they came and took up his corpse and laid it in a tomb.”  Verse Matthew 14:12:  “His disciples came, took the body, and buried it. Then they went and told Jesus.” ↩

16. 11p.

    Verse Mark 2:18:  “John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, and they came and asked him, "Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don't fast?” ↩

17. 11q.

    Verse Luke 7:20:  “Are you he who comes, or should we look for another?”  John's disciples are speaking for him.  The axe and the winnowing fork are in Matthew 3:10-12. ↩

18. 11r.

    Verse Acts 18:25:  Of Apollos:  “he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, although he knew only the baptism of John.” ↩

19. 11s.

    Verse Acts 19:3:  “He said, "Into what then were you baptized?" They said, "Into John's baptism.”  Verse Acts 19:7:  “They were about twelve men in all.” ↩

20. 11t.

    Verse John 3:26:  “behold, he baptizes, and everyone is coming to him.”  Verse John 3:28:  “You yourselves testify that I said, 'I am not the Christ,' but, 'I have been sent before him.'” ↩

21. 11u.

    Verse Acts 5:36-37:  Of Theudas:  “He was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were dispersed and came to nothing. After this man, Judas of Galilee rose up in the days of the enrollment, and drew away some people after him. He also perished, and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered abroad.” ↩

22. 11v.

    Verse Mark 16:7:  “He goes before you into Galilee. There you will see him, as he said to you.”  The spirit and the locked doors are at Luke 24:37 and John 20:19. ↩

23. 11w.

    Verse Galatians 1:18-19:  “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days. But of the other apostles I saw no one except James, the Lord's brother.”  The WEB prints Peter where the Greek has Cephas. ↩

24. 11x.

    Verse Acts 26:16:  “for I have appeared to you for this purpose: to appoint you a servant and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will reveal to you”.  The Greek of the last clause is ὧν τε ὀφθήσομαί σοι, literally "of the things in which I will appear to you," the future of the verb used for the appearances in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8. ↩ ↩ ↩

25. 11y.

    Verse Acts 9:17:  “Brother Saul, the Lord, who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me”.  The Greek participle is ὀφθείς, from the same verb as 1 Corinthians 15:5-8. ↩

26. 11z.

    Verse Acts 13:31:  “and he was seen for many days by those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses to the people.”  Paul is the speaker. ↩

27. 11aa.

    Verse Acts 18:9:  “The Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, "Don't be afraid, but speak and don't be silent;”. ↩

28. 11ab.

    Verse 2 Corinthians 12:8-9:  “Concerning this thing, I begged the Lord three times that it might depart from me. He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” ↩

29. 11ac.

    Verse Revelation 1:17-19:  “When I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man.”  “I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever and ever.”  “Write therefore the things which you have seen”. ↩

30. 11ad.

    Verse John 21:14:  “This is now the third time that Jesus was revealed to his disciples after he had risen from the dead.” ↩

31. 11ae.

    Verse 1 Corinthians 9:2:  “If to others I am not an apostle, yet at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.” ↩

32. 11af.

    Verse Acts 14:14:  “But when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of it, they tore their clothes and sprang into the multitude, crying out”. ↩

33. 11ag.

    Verse Romans 16:7:  “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and my fellow prisoners, who are notable among the apostles, who were also in Christ before me.” ↩

34. 11ah.

    Verse Luke 24:37:  “But they were terrified and filled with fear, and supposed that they had seen a spirit.”  Verse Luke 24:41:  “he said to them, "Do you have anything here to eat?” ↩

35. 11ai.

    Verse John 7:5:  “For even his brothers didn't believe in him.” ↩

36. 11aj.

    Verse Hosea 6:2:  “After two days he will revive us. On the third day he will raise us up, and we will live before him.” ↩

37. 11ak.

    Verse 1 Corinthians 15:20:  “But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruit of those who are asleep.”  Verse 1 Corinthians 15:23:  “But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ's at his coming.” ↩

38. 11al.

    Verse Philippians 2:8-9:  “he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, yes, the death of the cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name,”. ↩

39. 11am.

    Verse Philippians 3:10:  “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection”.  Verse Philippians 3:21:  “who will change the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory”. ↩

Carrier, Richard.  “The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb.”  The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, 105–231.  Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.  Edited by Robert M. Price and Jeffery Jay Lowder.  2005.  A long essay by an atheist historian of antiquity arguing that Paul believed Christ rose in a new spiritual body and left the old one in the grave, and that the empty-tomb story is a later legend.  This article uses it for that reading of Paul and for its view that the third day was taken from Scripture.

1. 12a.

   Page 150:  “And the elaborations tell us it is not our mortal bodies that rise. They pass away. We rise, instead, in spiritual bodies.” ↩

2. 12b.

   Page 159:  “Whatever the case, Paul's conviction in 1 Corinthians 15:4 that Jesus "was raised on the third day according to the scriptures" must derive from some Old Testament passage”.  “And the Hosea passage is the most probable scriptural source”. ↩

Wright, N. T.  “The Resurrection of the Son of God.”  Christian Origins and the Question of God 3.  London: SPCK; Minneapolis: Fortress.  2003.  A 700-page study by an Anglican bishop and New Testament scholar of what Jews, pagans and early Christians meant by resurrection, ending in a historical argument for the empty tomb and the appearances.  This article uses its conclusion on what the word meant.

1. 13a.

   Page 694:  “the meaning of 'resurrection', both in the Jewish and the non-Jewish world of late antiquity, was never that the person concerned had simply 'gone to heaven', or been 'exalted' in some way which did not involve a new bodily life.”  “'Resurrection' meant embodiment; that was equally so for the pagans, who denied it, as it was for the Jews, at least some of whom hoped for it.” ↩

The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. 2:  Pseudepigrapha.  Oxford: Clarendon Press.  Edited by R. H. Charles.  1913.  R. H. Charles's standard English translation of the Jewish writings outside the Bible, with introductions.  This article quotes its Jubilees, a retelling of Genesis and Exodus written in Hebrew in the second century BC.

1. 14a.

   Page 48, verse Jubilees 23:30-31:  “And at that time the Lord will heal His servants, And they shall rise up and see great peace,”.  “And their bones shall rest in the earth, And their spirits shall have much joy,”. ↩

Endsjø, Dag Øistein.  “Immortal Bodies, before Christ: Bodily Continuity in Ancient Greece and 1 Corinthians.”  Journal for the Study of the New Testament 30(4):417–436.  2008.  A journal article on Greek ideas of bodily immortality read beside 1 Corinthians 15.  It argues that traditional Greek religion knew of bodily resurrection for exceptional individuals, always of the same body intact, and that this explains why Paul's Corinthian opponents accepted Christ's resurrection but rejected a general resurrection of the dead.

1. 15a.

   Section Abstract:  “Platonic beliefs, where all forms of bodily resurrection were considered equally absurd”.  “Jewish tradition, which did not know of any resurrection and subsequent immortalization of a single individual before the end of the world.”  “Turning, however, to more traditional Greek material, one finds that the idea of bodily resurrection was not at all unknown. But there was always a question of absolute bodily continuity.” ↩ ↩

Martin, Dale B.  The Corinthian Body.  New Haven: Yale University Press.  1995.  A Yale New Testament scholar's reading of 1 Corinthians against ancient medicine and philosophy, in which spirit (pneuma) was itself a fine kind of matter.  Martin rejects a risen body of flesh;  this article uses him for his view that Paul's risen body is still a body.

1. 16a.

   Page 126:  “a body composed only of pneuma with sarx and psyche having been sloughed off along the way”.  Page 128:  “No physical/spiritual dichotomy is involved here, much less a material/immaterial one.” ↩

Allison, Dale C. Jr.  Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters.  New York: T&T Clark.  2005.  The earlier version of Allison's study of the resurrection traditions, which he rewrote and expanded in 2021.  This article quotes it only where the 2005 wording matters:  his reading of "last of all" as a cessation claim, which he withdrew in 2021, C. F. Evans's "egoism" suggestion, and his comment on the Mark 6 rumour about John.

1. 17a.

   Page 260:  “in 1 Cor 15:8, Paul wrote of Jesus appearing to him 'last of all' (ἔσχατον), which made him ἔκτρωμα. Whether the latter word means 'untimely born' or something else, Paul's formulation implies a belief that the resurrection appearances ceased early on, and that his later experience was an exception to the rule. Evidently he knew of no appearances of Jesus since his own.” ↩

2. 17b.

   Page 260:  Note 259 quotes C. F. Evans:  “C. F. Evans, Resurrection, 46, however, raises the possibility that Paul's statement might be less a remark on what the apostle had learned to be the case than 'an expression of Pauline "egoism," and of a dogmatic viewpoint about his own person, that with the appearance to himself and with his call to apostleship the period of revelation was over'”. ↩

3. 17c.

   Page 326:  “Apart from the fact that we have no evidence one way or the other about what the few purveyors of this ill-informed piece of superstition thought about John's tomb, if anything, the decisive point is this. If some really did regard Jesus of Nazareth as John risen from the dead, then they were identifying the Baptist with a body that was out and about in the real world: the wonder-working Jesus was not a disembodied spirit.” ↩

The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition, with MorphGNT tagging.  Edited by Michael W. Holmes.  2010.  A critical Greek text with each word's grammar and dictionary form.  The article uses it to compare the appearance language in Acts and 1 Corinthians.

1. 18a.

   Verse Acts 26:16:  “ὧν τε ὀφθήσομαί σοι”.  Verse 1 Corinthians 15:8:  “ὤφθη κἀμοί”.  Forms of the same verb, translated as appear or be seen; the future in Acts promises a further encounter. ↩

The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1.  London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam.  Edited by Kirsopp Lake.  1919.  The Loeb Classical Library edition of the earliest Christian writings after the New Testament, Greek text with English translation by Kirsopp Lake.  This article uses its translations of Ignatius's letter to the Romans and of the Didache, and Lake's dating of the Didache.

1. 19a.

   Page 231:  “I do not order you as did Peter and Paul; they were Apostles, I am a convict”.  Ignatius, Romans 4.3. ↩

2. 19b.

   Page 307:  “The original "Teaching" is probably early second century, or possibly earlier”.  Lake's introduction to the Didache. ↩

3. 19c.

   Page 327:  “Let every Apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord, 5. but let him not stay more than one day, or if need be a second as well; but if he stay three days, he is a false prophet.”  Didache 11.4-5. ↩

4. 19d.

   Page 327:  “Do not test or examine any prophet who is speaking in a spirit”.  Didache 11.7. ↩

Ignatius of Antioch.  “Epistle to the Smyrnaeans.”  Ante-Nicene Fathers 1.  1885.  A letter by Ignatius of Antioch to the people of Smyrna.  The article uses it because Ignatius argues from an appearance of Jesus to Peter's companions, an appearance that he does not claim for himself.

1. 20a.

   Chapter 3:  “For I know that after His resurrection also He was still possessed of flesh, and I believe that He is so now. When, for instance, He came to those who were with Peter, He said to them, Lay hold, handle Me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit.” ↩

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  The Message of Fatima.  Jun 26, 2000.  The Vatican's publication of the third part of the Fatima secret, with Sister Lucia's memoirs and a theological commentary by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI.  This article uses the commentary's definition of the line between the Church's closed public revelation and later private revelations.

1. 21a.

   Section Theological Commentary, Public Revelation and private revelations:  “In this context, it now becomes possible to understand rightly the concept of «private revelation», which refers to all the visions and revelations which have taken place since the completion of the New Testament. This is the category to which we must assign the message of Fatima.” ↩

Irenaeus.  “Against Heresies, Book 1, Chapter 3.”  Ante-Nicene Fathers 1.  1885.  A chapter from Irenaeus's book Against Heresies, which reports what the Valentinian sect taught.  The article uses it for the Valentinian claim that Jesus taught his disciples for eighteen months after the resurrection.

1. 22a.

   Book 1, chapter 3, section 2:  “the Lord, [according to them,] conversed with His disciples for eighteen months after His resurrection from the dead.” ↩ ↩

“The Apocryphon of James.”  The Nag Hammadi Library in English.  Translated by Francis E. Williams.  n.d.  A translation into English of one text, The Apocryphon of James, from the book The Nag Hammadi Library in English.  The article uses it for this text's count of five hundred and fifty days since the resurrection.

1. 23a.

   “And five hundred and fifty days since he had risen from the dead”. ↩ ↩

The Ascension of Isaiah.  Translated by R. H. Charles.  1900.  An English translation by R. H. Charles of The Ascension of Isaiah.  The article uses it for the number of days in its passage on the ascent, five hundred and forty-five.

1. 24a.

   Chapter 9, verse 16:  “He will ascend on the third day, [and he will remain in that world five hundred and forty-five days].”  The brackets are Charles's and mark a reading missing from part of the tradition. ↩ ↩

Pistis Sophia.  Translated by G. R. S. Mead.  1921.  An English translation by G. R. S. Mead of Pistis Sophia.  The article uses it for the eleven years that Jesus is said to have spent teaching his disciples after the resurrection.

1. 25a.

   Book 1, chapter 1:  “It came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years discoursing with his disciples”. ↩ ↩

Eusebius.  “Church History, Book 5.”  Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2 1.  1890.  Chapter 16, section The Circumstances related of Montanus and his False Prophets.  Book 5 of Eusebius's Church History, in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series.  The article uses it for the church's rejection of the new prophecy of Montanus and his followers. ↩

Josephus.  “Antiquities of the Jews.”  Perseus TEI edition.  Translated by William Whiston.  n.d.  A history of the Jews by Josephus, given here in William Whiston's English translation.  This article uses it as the one non-Christian account of John the Baptist's death, from a writer with no stake in Christian claims.

1. 27a.

   Section 18.5.2:  Niese numbers this passage 18.116-119.  “Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue”.  “Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion, (for they seemed ready to do any thing he should advise,) thought it best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause”.  “Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God's displeasure to him.” ↩

Pseudo-Clement.  “Recognitions, book 1.”  Ante-Nicene Fathers 8.  Translated by Thomas Smith.  1886.  A Christian romance about Clement of Rome and the apostle Peter, preserved in a Latin translation by Rufinus of about 407 and drawing on older sources.  Its first book includes a debate with a Baptist party.  This article uses it as late evidence that Christian writers did record exalted claims about John the Baptist.

1. 28a.

   Chapter 54:  “some even of the disciples of John, who seemed to be great ones, have separated themselves from the people, and proclaimed their own master as the Christ.”  Chapter 60:  “one of the disciples of John asserted that John was the Christ, and not Jesus”. ↩

Wright, N. T.  “Jesus and the Victory of God.”  Christian Origins and the Question of God 2.  Minneapolis: Fortress.  1996.  The second volume of N. T. Wright's large historical study of Jesus and early Christianity, written by a scholar who defends the resurrection.  This article uses its page 110, where Wright agrees with Sanders and lists the other Jewish movements of the period whose leaders were killed and whose followers made no such claim.

1. 29a.

   Page 110:  “One might add, for good measure, the followers not only of John the Baptist but of Judas the Galilean, Simon, Athronges, Eleazar ben Deinaus and Alexander, Menahem, Simon bar Giora, and bar-Kochba himself. Faced with the defeat of their leader, followers of such figures would either be rounded up as well or melt away into the undergrowth. The other possibility was to latch on to a new leader ... In not one case do we hear of any group, after the death of its leader, claiming that he was in any sense alive again, and that therefore Israel's expectation had in some strange way actually come true. History therefore spotlights the question: what happened to make Jesus' followers, from the very start, articulate such a claim and work out its implications?” ↩

Kelly, Thomas.  “Failed Prophecies Are Fatal.”  International Journal for the Study of New Religions 14(1):48–71.  2025.  A 2025 survey of the case studies of failed prophecies that exist.  The article uses it as modern evidence that a religious group usually ends after its prophecy fails.

1. 30a.

   Section Abstract:  “the extant case studies of failed prophecies show that the most common outcome for a religious group following a failed prophecy is group demise.” ↩

Ibn Ishaq.  The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah.  Oxford University Press.  Translated by Alfred Guillaume.  1955.  A translation of Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad, with an introduction and notes by A. Guillaume, first published in 1955.  The article uses it for the two accounts of what was said after Muhammad's death in 632, when Umar and Abu Bakr spoke to the crowd.

1. 31a.

   Page 682:  “When the apostle was dead 'Umar got up and said: 'Some of the disaffected will allege that the apostle is dead, but by God he is not dead: he has gone to his Lord as Moses b. 'Imran went and was hidden from his people for forty days, returning to them after it was said that he had died. By God, the apostle will return as Moses returned and will cut off the hands and feet of men who allege that the apostle is dead.'” ↩

2. 31b.

   Page 683:  “'O men, if anyone worships Muhammad, Muhammad is dead: if anyone worships God, God is alive, immortal.' Then he recited this verse: 'Muhammad is nothing but an apostle. Apostles have passed away before him.'” ↩

Scholem, Gershom.  Sabbatai Ṣevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676.  Princeton: Princeton University Press.  Translated by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky.  1973.  A book about the mystical messiah Sabbatai Ṣevi, who lived from 1626 to 1676.  The article uses it for the movement of 1665 to 1676, including its women prophets, and for Nathan of Gaza's teaching that the messiah would not die.

1. 32a.

   Page 606:  “the gift of prophecy continued powerfully in Constantinople. The example of Moses Suriel, or Saraval, was followed by hundreds of men and women, and the French eyewitness scornfully reported on the strange spectacle of seven to eight hundred women prophesying for several months in the Galata quarter of Constantinople”. ↩

2. 32b.

   Page 314:  “The messiah—according to Sabbatai's and Nathan's teaching—will, then, not die, but will be translated to higher worlds.”  The same page gives a parallel:  “In the theology of the more radical Shi'ite groups the doctrine of the occultation of the imam was widely accepted.”  Page 814:  “The doctrine of the messiah's occultation Nathan had learned from Sabbatai himself.” ↩

Bertrin, Georges.  “Notre-Dame de Lourdes.”  The Catholic Encyclopedia 9.  1910.  An entry in The Catholic Encyclopedia on the Lourdes apparitions of 1858.  The article uses it for the number of apparitions at Lourdes and the date of the last one.

1. 33a.

   “The first apparition occurred 11 February, 1858. There were eighteen in all; the last took place 16 July, of the same year.” ↩

Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.  “The Queen of Peace: Note about the spiritual experience connected with Medjugorje.”  Holy See Press Office bulletin.  Sep 19, 2024.  A note on the spiritual experience connected with Medjugorje and on the messages attributed to the visionaries there, published with the press conference that presented it (bulletin 240919i).  The article uses it for the dates of those messages, which run from 1981 to 2024.

1. 34a.

   The Note quotes messages with dates running from.  “(26 June 1981)”.  to 2024.  The press conference records the Ruini Commission's finding that.  “in the first seven apparitions, between 24 June and 3 July 1981, the youngsters, psychically healthy, were not influenced by anyone and they unanimously testified that they saw Our Lady”. ↩

Bilu, Yoram.  “'We Want to See Our King': Apparitions in Messianic Habad.”  Ethos 41(1):98–126.  2013.  A journal article by Yoram Bilu on apparitions of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, which followers in messianic Habad report.  The author accounts for them with a cognitive model of source misattribution, and the followers who report them maintain that the Rabbi has not died.  The article uses it for the count of 76 apparitions, which rises over time, and for the denial of death that keeps the apparitions in doubt.

1. 35a.

   Page 99:  “The various sources yielded a total sum of 76 testimonies of apparitions.”  Page 101:  “Visual encounters with the Rabbi increase over the years. Of the 76 apparitions reported throughout 1994-2010, yielding an annual average of 4-5 cases, 75 percent occurred in the second half of that period.” ↩

2. 35b.

   Section Abstract:  “Reports of apparitions of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last leader of the Habad Hasidic movement, have been spreading among the radically messianic Hasidim (meshichistim) in Israel, who maintain that the Rabbi, the designated Messiah, has not died.”  “I account for the lingering ambivalence toward apparitions in messianic Habad by highlighting the epistemological constraints imposed on them by the denial of the Rabbi's death.” ↩ ↩ ↩

Livy.  Ab Urbe Condita 1.16.  Translated by Roberts.  1912.  Chapter 16 of Book 1 of Livy's Ab Urbe Condita.  The article uses it for Livy's remark that a generally accepted belief was strengthened by one man's clever device.

1. 36a.

   Book 1, chapter 16:  “This generally accepted belief was strengthened by one man's clever device. The tradition runs that Proculus Julius, a man whose authority had weight in matters of even the gravest importance”.  “at break of dawn, to-day, the Father of this City suddenly descended from heaven and appeared to me.” ↩

Dein, Simon.  Lubavitcher Messianism: What Really Happens When Prophecy Fails?  London: Bloomsbury Academic.  2012.  A book by Simon Dein on the Lubavitch community after the death of its Rebbe.  The article uses it for the two positions that Lubavitch messianists took after the Rebbe's death: that he died and will be resurrected, or that he is alive but hidden.

1. 37a.

   Section Abstract:  “After his death Lubavitch divided into two opposing groups. While some messianists hold that the Rebbe died but is to be resurrected as the messiah, others hold that he is still alive, but concealed.” ↩

Olson, P. Richard et al.  “Hallucinations of Widowhood.”  Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 33(8):543–547.  1985.  A study of widows who had hallucinations of their dead spouses, by four authors.  The article uses it as an American replication of Rees's survey.

1. 38a.

   Section Abstract:  “Twenty-eight (61%) of the widows reported hallucinatory experiences of their deceased spouse.”  “Nineteen (54%) of the widows had never discussed the experiences with anyone before this study.” ↩

Dein, Simon.  “Miracles, Media, Mezuzot: Storytelling among Chabad Hasidim.”  Religions 7(9):119.  2016.  A journal article by Simon Dein, based on 27 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Lubavitch, on how storytelling keeps the Rebbe 'alive' after his death in 1994.  The article uses it for the report that followers still write, fax or e-mail the Rebbe's tomb for help and advice.

1. 39a.

   Section Introduction:  “The focus here is on another prominent Chabad practice—the role of storytelling in keeping the Rebbe 'alive' following his death in 1994. Based on 27 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Lubavitch”.  “Since the Rebbe's death in 1994, his followers continue to write, fax, or e-mail his tomb for help and advice.” ↩