Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
104as st ill t o be seen in surviving rolling-stone tombs, certainly would have provided
suffic ient spac e for individuals to be seated at both head and foot. But altogether
mo re imp o rt a n t is the agreement of all sourc es that just two days after Jesus had
been laid in the tomb not only had his body mysteriously disappeared but people
who had known him well began to have strange experienc es of seeing him among
them. Sometimes, distrusting their own senses, they reported seeing him pass
through loc ked doors, yet he was able to talk and eat with them (Luke 24: 43).
Reportedly he even felt like a living person to the touc h (John 20: 27, 28). The
c onvinc ingness of these enc ounters to those on the rec eiving end is powerfully
conveyed by the speech attributed to Peter in the tenth chapter of Acts:
Now I and those with me c an witness to everything he did throughout the
c ountryside of Judaea and in Jerusalem itself: and also to the fac t that they
kill ed him by hanging him on a tree, yet three days afterwards God raised
him t o life and allowed him t o be seen, not by t he whole people, but only by
certain witnesses God had chosen beforehand. Now we are those witnesses- we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead ...
(Ac ts 10: 39–42)
As even ‘Jesus-did-not-exist’ exponent Professor G. A. Wells has acknowledged,
this powerful belief caught on very soon after the events described, at least one
attestor to the resurrection, the apostle Paul, being readily dat eable. In Ac t s 18: 12
Paul is said t o have appeared before t he Ac haean proc onsul Gallio while on his
sec ond mission, and sinc e an insc ript ion found at Delphi enables Gallio’s
administration to be accurately dated to 51–2 AD, simple bac k c alc ulat ion
establishes that Paul must have believed in Jesus’ resurrec tion c. 40 AD, and
according to some authorities, perhaps even as early as 36 AD. So what had
happened to ac c ount for the fac t that Paul and others held this belief? In this
ostensibly simple quest ion lies t he c ent ral myst ery of t he Christ ian religion, and one
for whic h there remains no unc ontested rational answer.
The various ac c ounts of the sc ene at the empty tomb on the first Easter morning
are so full of inc onsist enc ies t hat it is easy for sceptics to deride them. The writer of
the John gospel describes Mary Magdalen arriving at the tomb alone, discovering
the tomb to be empty and imparting the news to Peter and an unnamed ‘other
disciple, the one Jesus loved’ (John 20: 2), generally ident ified as John. T he
Matthew author relates that Mary Magdalen was accompanied by ‘Mary the mother
of James and Joseph’. Mark adds a further companion, a woman called Salome,
referred to in the Thomas gospel. Luke, who knows nothing of any Salome, speaks
only of one ‘Joanna’ (presumably royal treasurer Chuza’s wife...together with other
women who go off to tell the disc iples what they have seen, though ac c ording to
Mark, the women, ‘frightened out of their wits... said nothing to a soul, for they
were afraid’ (Mark 16: 8).