Religious Studies Anthology

Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology

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Likewise merit ing c onsiderable weight as evidenc e is St Paul’s c lear and
unequivoc al statement in his letter to the Corinthians that the resurrec ted Jesus
had been seen not only by himself, by Simon Pet er, by t he ot her disc iples and by
James but also by more than five hundred people at one time, most of whom he
c laimed t o be st ill alive when he was set t ing his pen t o papyrus. As point ed out by
Dr Edwin M. Y amauc hi, Assoc iate Professor of History at Oxford, Ohio:

What gives a spec ial aut horit y t o... [Paul’s] list as hist oric al evidenc e is t he

reference to most of the five hundred brethren being still alive. St Paul says

in effect, ‘If you do not believe me, you can ask them.’ Suc h a statement in

an admitted genuine letter written within thirty years of the event is almost

as strong evidenc e as one c ould hope to get for something that happened

nearly two thousand years ago.

Overall then, while there are undeniable reporting flaws regarding Jesus’ claimed
resurrec tion, and at a time distanc e of nearly two thousand years knowledge of
exac tly what happened is beyond us, the evidenc e that something like it ac tually
happened is rather better than sc eptic s c are to admit. And quite inc ont rovert ibly,
belief in it spread like wildfire very soon aft er t he c ruc ifixion.

Thus the book of Acts mentions as one of the first new believers a Hellenistic Jew
c alled St ephen. Alt hough t heir anc est ry and religion was Jewish, Hellenist ic Jews
lived in the fashionable Graec o-Roman style, and spoke the Greek language. From
Josephus’ information that Jesus’ teac hing ‘attrac ted many Jews and many of the
Greeks’, Stephen’s adherence need not be considered out of the ordinary. But
whatever his bac kground, he chose, just like Jesus had, to attack the material
vanity of the Jerusalem Temple, harking bac k to the Isaiah text:

With heaven my throne

and earth my footstool,

what house c ould you build me,

what plac e c ould you make for my rest?

Was not all t his made by my hand?

(Isaiah 66: 1, 2)

Stephen then went on fearlessly to accuse the Jerusalem Temple authorities of
having, in exec uting Jesus, murdered the great prophet foretold by Moses. That
same Jesus, he impassionedly declared, he could see there and then ‘standing at
God’s right hand’. Without in this instanc e even pausing to refer their prisoner to
the Roman governor, those whom Stephen had attac ked peremptorily stoned him
to death.

Stephen was but the first of many who would take up this same c ause – inc luding,
as we shall see, previously reticent members of Jesus’ own family. They would
firmly profess Jesus as the Messiah or Christ predicted in the Jewish scriptures, and
emphatically attest that he had come back to life again after having suffered the
mo s t public of deaths. What c annot be emphasized enough is that those who made
suc h c laims had absolut ely no expec t at ion of any mat erial gain for t heir
outspokenness. Their reward instead, as the following dec ades and c enturies would
demonstrate, was all too frequently to be faced with some form of violent death,
from being st oned, t o being t orn t o piec es by wild animals in a Roman arena, t o
being c ruc ified in some yet more grotesque and painful manner.