Resurrecting A Marginal Jew: A Study on the Resurrection Narratives in the New Testament Using John P. Meier’s Criteria for Determining Historical Authenticity A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Theology Acadia University Spring Convocation 2011 In (Partial) Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Gregory James Monette B.A., Saint Mary’s University, 2007 M.Div., Acadia University, 2010 © copyright by Gregory James Monette, 2011 This thesis by GREGORY JAMES MONETTE was defended successfully in an oral examination on 19 April 2011. The examining committee for the thesis was: ________________________ Dr. Bruce Fawcett, Chair ________________________ Dr. Allison Trites, External Examiner ________________________ Dr. Christopher Killacky, Internal Examiner ________________________ Dr. Craig Evans, Supervisor & MA Director ________________________ Dr. Harry Gardner, Dean & President This thesis is accepted in its present form by Acadia Divinity College, the Faculty of Theology of Acadia University, as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Theology). ii This thesis by GREGORY JAMES MONETTE was defended successfully in an oral examination on 19 April 2011. The examining committee for the thesis was: Dr. Bruce Fawcett, Chair Dr. Allison Trites, External Examiner Dr. Christopher Killacky, Internal Examiner Dr. Craig Evans, Supervisor & MA Director Dr. Harry Gardner, Dean & President This thesis is accepted in its present form by Acadia Divinity College, the Faculty of Theology of Acadia University, as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Theology). iii Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………..v INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: John P. Meier: Miracles; History; Criteria 5 CHAPTER 2: The Historical Sources Pertaining to Jesus’ Burial, Empty Tomb and Resurrection 30 CHAPTER 3: The Burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea 50 CHAPTER 4: Women in Antiquity and the Empty Tomb 76 CHAPTER 5: Paul and the Earliest Creed about Jesus’ Resurrection 105 SUMMARY AND FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS 130 BIBLIOGRAPHY 135 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS If you were to ask me five years ago what I would like to accomplish in the next half decade, I definitely would not have said “write a masters thesis!” I have learned that life is full of surprises. Having pursued and completed this thesis, I have many people to thank and not enough space to do so. Therefore, I will limit my acknowledgements to only a few of those deserving of mention. First of all, I want to thank the faculty and staff of Acadia Divinity College, particularly Professor Craig Evans who gave me excellent supervision. I value Craig’s friendship as much as his scholarly advice. I look forward to working with him in the years to come as I pursue doctoral studies. I would also like to give a word of thanks to Professors: Glenn Wooden, Allison Trites, Chris Killacky and Danny Zacharias for their academic advice and friendship. Having completed both my M.Div., and M.A., at Acadia Divinity College, I must say that this school is in excellent hands with the Rev. Dr. Harry Gardner at the helm of the ship as the school’s president. Harry is a man of God who is the perfect person to lead this school at the present time and I am blessed to call him my friend. I would also like to thank all of my friends from Acadia Divinity College including: Tyler Bennicke, Roy Medeiros, Sam Jess, Mike Gill, Matt Snow, Adam Wright, Mike Fredericks, Paul Worden, Dan Pyke and Tammy Giffin. I am a blessed man to have you as my friends. There is a popular and very true saying that “it takes a village to raise a child.” For this reason I would like to thank all of those from Fall River Chapel who raised me to be a man after God’s own heart. If it wasn’t for Glenn and Sharleen Clark and the youth group held in their home, who knows if I would have ever met my wife Julie? v I want to thank my brothers: Connell, Mark and Johnnie, as well as my sister Christine for their love and support. My parents Ray and Marilyn as well as my In-laws Tom and Debby (Rudolph) are to be thanked for raising such good looking and intelligent children! Finally, I want to dedicate this thesis to two people: to my brother-in-law Matthew Walsh who is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Biblical Studies at McMaster University for encouraging me to attend Acadia Divinity College. I value my friendship with you very much and I thank God that I asked you to be my guitar teacher so you could indirectly meet my sister Christine (though I quit guitar after a few lessons ). Matt is an example of an academic who pursues higher critical study of the Biblical text and is also a committed and passionate Christian. I admire your life Matt and I love you very much. I also dedicate this thesis to my beautiful wife Julie. Words cannot express how fortunate I am to be able to call you my wife. You are the greatest gift that God has ever given me next to his own Son. I look forward to growing old with you and ministering with you to see increase in God’s Kingdom. You are the love of my life and I am a better man because of you. I can attest to the truth of the statement “behind every good man is a greater woman!” To my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: You are the reason I live! Because of your life, death and resurrection I can live each day with hope and purpose. Though I fail often, you never fail me. My life is dedicated to you and I hope to serve you for the rest of my days with energy and passion. vi Introduction John P. Meier is one of the most influential and impressive historical Jesus scholars in the world today. His work is so detailed and thorough that it is difficult to make arguments against what he concludes. He has engaged in a groundbreaking study of the historical Jesus by applying what he considers to be the essential criteria of historicity to the life of Jesus. So far, Meier has written four large volumes totaling 496, 1136, 720 and 752 pages respectively, and more is yet to come. That being said, Meier has said that he will not use the criteria of historicity that he uses on every other aspect relating to the historical Jesus on the resurrection accounts given in the New Testament. I agree with William Lane Craig that, “It is sobering to think that the world’s preeminent historical Jesus scholar plans to end his voluminous life of Jesus with the crucifixion and burial, with apparently no concern for what German scholars call “das Geschick Jesu” (Jesus’ final fate).”1 The purpose of my thesis is to apply the criteria of historical authenticity as outlined by John P. Meier in his famous series A Marginal Jew to the resurrection narratives found in the four Canonical Gospels and in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. It is my goal to demonstrate, like many others have before me, that the criteria that John Meier endorses can be applied to the burial, empty tomb, and post-mortem appearance narratives in the Gospels and 1 Corinthians 15, yielding historical results. As previously mentioned, Meier uses set criteria during his research in order to answer the question: ‘Who was the historical Jesus and what did he say and do?’ He begins the first volume (of which there are four to date) discussing the sources and criteria that will be used to conduct his study (pp.1-195). He makes it clear that during his 1 W.L. Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (3rd ed., Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 353. 1 research he will look at the life of Jesus from his birth to his death. However, Meier emphatically states that he will not look at the resurrection narratives because following in the tradition of Gerald O’Collins, “a treatment of the resurrection is omitted not because it is denied but simply because the restrictive definition of the historical Jesus I will be using does not allow us to proceed into matters that can be affirmed only by faith” (p.13). Meier repeats this in a footnote on page 201 when he says that, “On this point…O’Collins argues (rightly, in my view) that, although the ‘resurrection is a real, bodily event involving the person of Jesus of Nazareth’ (p. 381), the resurrection of Jesus ‘is not an event in space and time and hence should not be called historical’ (p. 384), since ‘we should require an historical occurrence to be something significant that is known to have happened in our space-time continuum’ (p. 384)” (p. 202). Driving the point home, Meier explains once again in volume two of his A Marginal Jew series that, “I would not count … Christ’s resurrection from the dead…as a miracle, since [it is not] in principle open to the observation of any and every observer” (p. 525). I disagree with John P. Meier on the question of the historicity of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. I agree with him on the idea that Jesus’ resurrection was a real bodily event. However, I feel as though Meier has decided to complete only a portion of the research necessary to draw up a history of Jesus of Nazareth and has decided to conclude his study without drawing a relatively complete picture, which would include a look at the resurrection. I will explain why I disagree with him in the introductory chapter of my thesis.