(Revised Dec. 11, 2025)
I’ve heard it said that if the resurrection had not happened, Jesus would have been remembered, if at all, as a failed preacher who deluded himself that he was the Messiah. I don’t think that is necessarily the case. Religious/spiritual teachers and religious martyrs are remembered and continue to have followers for centuries without anyone making claims of their postmortem appearances to people. Consider Moses, the Buddha, the martyred Imam Ali of Islam, or Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints, who was shot to death by an angry mob.
But claims of resurrection appearances by Jesus did happen, and they helped spread a growing movement which heralded him not only as the Messiah, but as the first of those to be resurrected in the end times, and ultimately as equal to God. Trying to discern what actually happened to generate these claims is one of the great puzzles of history. Even so, I think it is an apt place to begin in sorting out what happened at the outset of the religion. We might question everything that’s been written about Jesus, but we know with certainty that his early followers talked about his resurrection from the dead. And because that belief had an influence on almost everything else they said about him, it needs to be taken into account in assessing our sources when they recount his life and teachings.
There are three types of evidence about the resurrection from the early Christian sources. One, the Christian missionary Paul wrote a letter recounting a tradition that some disciples experienced Jesus again after his death. Two, the four canonical Christian gospels recounting events regarding his life and death say that a few of his disciples discovered that the tomb he had been buried in was empty two days after his body had been laid there. And lastly, three of the gospels and one other canonical Christian scripture, the Acts of the Apostles, describe several earthly actions of the resurrected Jesus.
Paul on Jesus’ appearances
The earliest Christian documents we have copies of are the letters of Paul to various Christian communities around the Mediterranean. Dating such documents is tricky, but the academic consensus is that he wrote them approximately in the decade of the 50s C.E. (A.D.) That would be about 15-25 years after the presumed date of the death of Jesus and about 15-20 years before the earliest gospel we know of, the one attributed to Mark as the author. In other words, about mid-way between the death of Jesus and the first written narrative of Jesus’ life. Much of what we know about Christianity during those decades comes from the letters of Paul.
Paul does not show much interest in Jesus’ life, focusing instead on the meaning of his death and resurrection and offering instructions to the communities he wrote to. He expected the end of current history and the inauguration of the kingdom of God to happen in the very near future, so his eyes were on the present and his mission of preaching to the Gentiles (non-Jews) while waiting for the imminent return of Jesus as judge and ruler of all.
However, Paul does bequeath us some clues about the appearances of Jesus after his death. Here is what he wrote in what is called the first letter to the Corinthians:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Cor. 15: 3-8)
Paul’s language of receiving and delivering information of “first importance” implies carefully passing down a tradition with a set verbal formulation. That formulation starts with the kernel of Paul’s missionary message, that Jesus died for our sins as predicted in the Jewish scriptures, that he was buried, and that God raised him from the dead, again as predicted in the scriptures. He goes on to include a list of appearances of the risen Jesus: to Cephas (which roughly means “man of stone” in Aramaic, as does “Peter” in Greek), “the twelve” (apostles), five hundred Christians at one time, a “James” with no further identification, “all” the apostles, and then finally Paul himself.
Nowhere does he describe what any of these appearances were like, including his own experience. Did they see Jesus? If so, was he here on earth or in a vision of the heavens? Did they hear his voice, either along with a visual appearance or a voice by itself? Did they touch him? Did he handle any objects? Where did he come from and where did he go? Paul says nothing to satisfy our curiosity. However, we have a few scant clues as to Paul’s understanding of the resurrected Jesus.
Later in the letter he attempts to answer a question: “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” (1 Cor 15: 35) His answer is not very clear, except to emphasize that our “spiritual,” “imperishable” resurrected body will be categorically different than our ordinary, “perishable” earthly body. What a “spiritual” body is like, other than it will not die, is left to our imagination.
Several lines later (15: 45) he adds: “So it is written: ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.” By the “last Adam” he means Jesus, confirming that in Paul’s view the resurrected Jesus is now a life-giving spirit.
What about the witnesses Paul lists? Wouldn’t such a list, carefully handed down as a specific formulation, indicate that the early disciples wanted to guarantee the veracity of these appearances?
My answer is a qualified yes. Consider that Paul includes himself at the end of the list. Would an earlier tradition been have passed down to him saying that Paul himself was “last of all, as to one untimely born”? How would they know he was last and why describe his experience as untimely? It is clear that Paul added himself to the end of the traditional list. This raises the question of where the traditional list ends and Paul’s addition(s) begin: just before Paul is listed or at some point before that?
Bart Ehrman (2014: 139-142) argues that it ends after the mention of Cephas. That would leave a formulation with a parallel structure easy to remember and convey to others:
Christ died/for our sins/in accordance with the scriptures/and he was buried.
Christ was raised/on the third day/in accordance with the scriptures/and he appeared to Cephas.
The first section in each line is a parallel statement about Christ (he died/he was raised). The second section ties the statement to a prophecy in Jewish scripture (for our sins/on the third day). The third section is exactly the same in each line (in accordance with the scriptures), following up the previous section. And the final section is a brief conclusion (he was buried/he appeared to Cephas). It is a tightly constructed set of parallel statements, which would be asymmetrical if more was added after the mention of Cephas. That would suggest that all of the rest of the list was added by Paul from some source(s) other than the tradition as it had been handed down to him and to the Corinthians.
I find this argument compelling. If correct, the tradition recounted by Paul would be the earliest and best source concerning who made the first claim to have experienced Jesus after his death: Cephas/Peter. This fits with other evidence that Peter was a central figure in the early Christian community, such as Paul’s reference to him as a “pillar” of the Christian community in Jerusalem (Galatians 2:9, but see also Ehrman’s blog post on the identification of Cephas with Peter), his role in the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and letters to early Christian communities that were purported to have been written by him. In the Gospel of Luke there is an indication that Peter was the first to take heart after the death of Jesus, inserted just before Jesus’ prediction that Peter will deny him three times after Jesus is arrested. (Jesus uses Peter’s original name, Simon, before he was given the name Cephas/Peter.)
“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail, and when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” (Lk 22: 31-32)
Based on this evidence, I think Peter was the first to experience what he took to be a resurrected Jesus, and that his claim was carefully preserved and handed down in the larger Christian community. Was this a “spiritual body,” as Paul puts it? I don’t think we will ever know what Peter saw, but apparently it was convincing enough to bolster Peter’s confidence and become a turning point for him, for the other early disciples, and for the rest of Western history.
As for the other appearances on the list, I regard them as stories Paul heard from someone or other but likely had not done much to verify. You would think five hundred people seeing the resurrected Jesus at the same time would be dramatic enough that reports of it would reach those undertaking to write about Jesus, but there is no mention of it in any other source. Nor is there any other mention of an appearance to James, unless this was James the apostle and he saw Jesus as one of several unnamed apostles present at one of the appearances in the gospels. Either the authors of the gospels had never heard of these appearances or they did not think they were worth repeating.
I can imagine a report of the appearance to Peter touching off a contagion of reports of unusual experiences, such as a light or a voice, interpreted as the risen Jesus. (See my discussion of Paul in the section on the gospels below.) For Paul’s experience to be the last, the others he lists must have happened before his conversion, which took place just a few years after the death of Jesus was said to have happened. But Paul may not have heard about all these other appearances until years later, nearer the time he wrote the letter. They could have been second-hand reports or even more remote from the alleged events. Once the idea of the resurrection took hold, additional reports would have a ready audience among those who believed, no matter their substance or lack of it. In my judgment, Peter is the only person on the list whose experience, whatever it was, is convincingly attested by Paul (along with Paul himself, who presents himself as a first-hand witness), and his experience became the foundation for the belief in the resurrection and the catalyst for the rest of the reports. As for Paul, his experience of Jesus was as, in his words, a “life-giving spirit,” someone with a “spiritual body.”
The empty tomb
Nowhere in his letters does Paul mention the idea that Jesus’ body disappeared from its tomb. In his letter to the Corinthians referenced above he does indicate that he thinks there is some continuity between the body of our ordinary life and the “spiritual” body after someone is resurrected, using the analogy of a seed that falls in the ground and later emerges as a plant. This could suggest that a buried corpse could be raised back to life as something very different, but his stress is on the difference rather than the emergence from the ground. His main aim in this passage is to defend the idea that there will be a general resurrection of all people when Christ returns. My interpretation is that the Corinthian Christians he was addressing saw Jesus’ resurrection as unique, perhaps a purely spiritual elevation to the heavens, having little to do with what happens to the rest of our bodies after we die. If that is the case, it is notable that Paul did not bring up the story of the empty tomb to refute them.
The earliest reference to the empty tomb that we know of is found at the end of the gospel of Mark. That gospel is usually dated to around 70 C.E., nearly two decades after Paul wrote his letters. Here is how the gospel ends:
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they could go and anoint Jesus’ dead body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they came to the tomb. They were saying to each other, “Who is going to roll the stone away from the entrance for us?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away. It was a very large stone. Going into the tomb, they saw a young man in a white robe seated on the right side; and they were startled. But he said to them, “Don’t be alarmed! You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised. He isn’t here. Look, here’s the place where they laid him. Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you into Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you.” Overcome with terror and amazement, they fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone; they were afraid, for... (Mk 16: 1-8)
That’s it–no postmortem appearances of Jesus, just a mysterious man announcing Jesus was raised and that the disciples will see him back in Galilee. Some copies of Mark contain one of two versions of additional material about appearances of Jesus similar to those found in the other gospels, but the two earliest manuscripts of Mark we have, both from the 4th century, and many later ones, end at verse 8. Both Eusebius, the Church historican who lived at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century, and Jerome, the Christian Biblical scholar of a century later, knew of copies of Mark with the short ending and doubted the authenticity of the additional material. (Segal, 2004: 446, citing Frank W. Beare, The Earliest Records of Jesus, 1962) The academic consensus is that the original version of Mark ends there, although the final word, which leads one to expect more, remains a puzzle.
Matthew, Luke and John, the putative authors of the other three canonical gospels, also have the story of the discovery of the empty tomb, but with variations in the details, such as how many women went there, whether one or two “angels” were at the tomb, and whether the angel(s) instructed them that Jesus would appear to the disciples in Galilee. Matthew adds drama to the scene with an earthquake and the angel coming down from heaven to roll the stone away in front of them. All three say that the women went back and told the disciples, unlike Mark who leaves them close lipped about what they saw. (One has to assume they told somebody at some point, otherwise how would Mark have heard the story?) And all three follow up the story with appearances by Jesus. For now let us stick with the story up to the point where the women leave the tomb.
John, and possibly Luke, add a significant detail: Peter goes back to the tomb and verifies that it is empty. In John only one woman, Mary Magdalene, goes to the tomb and sees the stone moved, but no man or angel is present. She runs away and encounters Peter and another unnamed disciple and tells them what she saw. They hurry to the tomb and go in, Peter entering first, to find the body missing and the burial cloths lying there. In Luke the scene with Peter is a brief line, simply saying that after hearing the women Peter ran back to the tomb and looked in, seeing the burial linen laid aside but no body. He leaves wondering what was going on. (The line, Lk 24:12, is not found in all of the early manuscripts and may have been added later to harmonize it with the story in John.) This brings Peter in as a witness to the empty tomb, corresponding somewhat with his prominent role in the events after Jesus’ death outlined in the previous section.
John has yet more that is different. After Peter and the other disciple depart, Mary remains sitting by the tomb crying. She takes another look into the tomb and now sees two angels, who ask her why she is crying. She tells them someone removed the body from the tomb and she doesn’t know where to find it. Mary then turns around and sees Jesus but does not recognize him at first. They speak to each other and she realizes it is Jesus, and it is he who gives her a message which she then conveys to the disciples. So although Peter is the first to witness the empty tomb, Mary is the first to see the risen Jesus.
There are two ways of explaining the origin of the empty tomb story: that it is entirely fictional or it is based on a real event. Let’s start with the first.
Empty tomb stories were a common trope in Greek fictional literature in the first century. Here is a passage from a novel often referred to as “Chariton”:
At the crack of dawn Chaereas turned up at the tomb, ostensibly to offer wreaths and libations, but in fact with the intention of doing away with himself; he could not bear being separated from Callirhoe and thought that death was the only thing that would cure his grief. When he reached the tomb, he found that the stones had been moved and the entrance was open. He was astonishedat the sight and overcome by fearful perplexity at what had happened. Rumor—a swift messenger—told the Syracusans this amazing news. They all quickly crowded round the tomb, but no one dared go inside until Hermocrates gave an order to do so. The man who was sent in reported the whole situation accurately. It seemed incredible that even the corpse was not lying there. Then Chaereas himself determined to go in, in his desire to see Callirhoe again even dead; but though he hunted through the tomb, he could find nothing. Many people could not believe itand went in after him. They were all seized by helplessness. One of those standing there said, “The funeral offerings have been carried off — it is tomb robbers who have done that; but what about the corpse — where is it?” Many different suggestions circulated in the crowd. Chaereas looked towards the heavens, stretched up his arms, and cried: “Which of the gods is it, then, who has become my rival in love and carried off Callirhoe and is now keeping her with him — against her will, constrained by a more powerful destiny? That is why she died suddenly — so that she would not realize what was happening. That is how Dionysus took Ariadne from Theseus, how Zeus took Semele. It looks as if I had a goddess for a wife without knowing it, someone above my station.
Note the mourner who shows up at dawn to pay proper respects, the stones moved from the entrance, the astonishment and perplexity of the witnesses, the fruitless search of the tomb, and the mourner’s conclusion that the deceased had become a goddess, taken up to live with a god. In this story the reason for the body’s disappearance is that the woman who supposedly died had recovered in the tomb and tomb robbers carried her off into slavery. But many of the elements of the scene are the same as those in Mark.
B.P. Reardon, a noted scholar of ancient Greek novels, places the author of Chariton in about the middle of the first century, the same time Mark is thought to have written his gospel. I haven’t seen any argument that one directly drew from the other, but rather the view of experts seems to be that both are examples of a type of story told in different ways about different figures that had common elements various storytellers drew from.
The purpose of Mark’s story of the empty tomb, as I see it, is to offer a final scene indicating both that Jesus was resurrected and that it involved a transformation of his corpse; that is, it was not simply his spirit that had risen. Either the author did not know of the appearance to Peter that Paul recounts or chose not to use it for some other reason; perhaps it did not meet Mark’s purposes because it did not involve Jesus’ corpse. In my opinion Mark created the empty tomb story and did not include the appearance to Peter because he chose to end his gospel at that point.
So was the story fictional? Yes, but perhaps not entirely. There is the possibility that some real event was the foundation for a more embellished story with elements drawn from the genre of the empty tomb.
Here I turn to arguments that there is an historical basis for the story. Of course, one is that women actually did discover an empty tomb because Jesus’s body had been resurrected. I don’t rule that out on metaphysical grounds, but any even-handed assessment has to allow that it would be less likely than a naturalistic explanation, especially if the latter was not too strained.
One common naturalistic argument is that the disciples stole Jesus’ body in the middle of the night and then claimed he had been resurrected. A corpse removal strikes me as a difficult and risky endeavor, for one reason because after the crucifixion of Jesus his disciples would have reason to fear the same fate if they were apprehended. I also find it hard to square their reasons for following Jesus, presumably a belief in him and his mission, with any plausible motives for perpetuating a fraud. Other arguments include the swoon hypothesis, the lost body hypothesis, and the substitution hypothesis, none of which I find any more plausible than a stolen body.
A variation of the stolen body argument which I came across recently was put forward by Freeman (2009: 32-34). He speculates that the high priest Caiaphas had the body removed and posted junior priests, who as a custom wore white robes, to tell anyone coming to the tomb that Jesus rose and returned to Galilee. His motive would be to get Jesus’ disciples out of Jerusalem and Judea, that is, out of his hair. I question whether Caiaphas would have gone to the trouble of removing Jesus’ body, given that he could simply post a junior priest and have him tell any disciples who showed up to go back to Galilee. To me this latter simplified version of Freeman’s explanation is more plausible than any others I am aware of. The women’s report could have been embellished by Mark, or by someone retelling the story before it reached Mark, to include the man’s message about Jesus being raised and the women looking into the tomb to verify the absence of the body.
The idea that the women encountered a man at the tomb who told them to go back to Galilee provides a possible historical basis for the story of the empty tomb and I think it is the most likely of the various scenarios for a real event behind it. Even so, I think Mark invented the entire story as a dramatic way to end his gospel and affirm that Jesus’ resurrection involved his physical body. (I’ll have more on Mark’s intentions when I write a future page on the composition of his gospel.)
Appearances in the gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles
Although Mark ends without any appearances of the risen Jesus, Matthew, Luke and John go on to describe several of them. However, their stories differ in significant ways.
In Matthew Jesus intercepts the women on their way to convey the angel’s message to the disciples. They grasp his feet in worship and he repeats the message that the disciples should go to Galilee where he will meet them. Matthew then interjects a story of the soldiers who were posted at the tomb, a detail which is only in this gospel and was set up earlier, just after Jesus’ burial, with the high priests persuading Pilate to post the guards. After the soldiers witness the descent of the angel and his removal of the stone at the entrance, but, incongruously, not the resurrection, the soldiers report to the high priests and are paid to tell people the disciples stole the body. So clearly the stolen body hypothesis was in circulation by the time Matthew wrote his gospel. Matthew then jumps to Galilee with the eleven “disciples” (presumably the twelve apostles minus Jesus’ betrayer Judas) at “the mountain to which Jesus directed them.” Jesus appears and they worship him, “but some doubted.” Jesus then commissions them to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” and to have them obey the commandments he gave them, and he promises to be with them until “the close of the age.”
Several points are worth mentioning. The first people to see the risen Jesus are Mary Magdalene and Mary, “the mother of James and Joseph.” They not only see him but grasp his feet, a sign of his physicality. Peter does not see Jesus until he is with the ten other remaining apostles in Galilee, which is a multi-day’s foot journey from Jerusalem, so this event must be at least a few days after Jesus’ appearance to the women. Jesus appears on a mountain and reminds the disciples of his commandments, a scene reminiscent of Moses delivering God’s commandments to the people of Israel on Mount Sinai. And some of the disciples who see Jesus doubt, an odd response given the circumstances.
In Luke, after the women’s story is dismissed by the disciples, we find two of the latter walking to Emmaus, a village seven miles away, discussing the recent events. Jesus joins them but they do not recognize him. He asks what they were talking about and they tell him the story of Jesus’ execution, their hope he was the Messiah, the women’s discovery of the empty tomb, and that some of the disciples went back and verified the empty tomb. Jesus chides them and explains how all this happened to fulfill the scriptures. When they reach the village they prevail upon him to stay for dinner. Jesus stays and, when he blesses and breaks the bread, they recognize him and he disappears. They go back to Jerusalem and tell the eleven apostles. When they reach the part about recognizing Jesus in his breaking of the bread, Jesus suddenly appears in the room with them. Those gathered react with fear, supposing “they saw a spirit.” Jesus reassures them by inviting them to touch his body and by eating a piece of fish. He again explains how the recent events are a fulfillment of scripture and instructs them to stay in the city until “you are clothed with power from on high.” He then leads them out to Bethany a couple miles away, blesses them, and is carried up into heaven. They return to Jerusalem, where they are “continually in the Temple blessing God.”
Again note several points. Neither the women nor Peter are the first to see the risen Jesus; the honor goes to two anonymous disciples. Jesus appears not in Jerusalem and then in Galilee, as in Matthew, but on the road to Emmaus and then in Jerusalem. The first to see him do not recognize him until much later, in the breaking of the bread. The apostles are able to touch him and he eats food before them. Unlike in Matthew, who ends the story with Jesus talking to the disciples at the mountain in Galilee, Luke has Jesus ascend into heaven from Bethany.
Aside from all the apostles together seeing Jesus at some point, and both authors emphasizing Jesus’ physicality, the narratives of Matthew and Luke are completely different in significant ways.
Luke does have a bit more to say in the Acts of the Apostles. The Acts of the Apostles is another canonical Christian scripture, a narrative of the Christian community in the years immediately following the death of Jesus. The broad consensus of Biblical scholars is that it was written by the same author as the one who wrote what we call the Gospel of Luke. It starts with a short recap of Luke’s gospel and notes that after Jesus’ death “he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.” Luke repeats that Jesus told them to stay in Jerusalem and wait to be “baptized by the Holy Spirit.” The disciples ask if it is the time he will restore the kingdom to Israel, and he tells them that is not for them to know. He informs them they are to be his witnesses “to the ends of the earth” and is lifted up and a cloud takes him from their sight. Two men in white robes appear to tell them Jesus will return the same way he left.
Here we learn that Jesus remained with his disciples for forty days (a symbolic number in Jewish tradition for a period of formation) before ascending into heaven, unlike in Matthew where he promises to be with them always, “to the end of the age.” Luke also has angels tell the disciples that Jesus will return the same way, coming down from heaven, a detail found in neither Matthew nor John.
Now let’s turn back to John. As we saw, in John Mary Magdalene is the first to see Jesus, but unlike in Matthew she is alone and sees him at the tomb rather than on the way to the disciples. She does not recognize him until he says her name. He tells her not to hold him, for he has “not yet ascended to the Father,” thus discouraging any physical touching. He then sends her to the disciples. That evening he appears before the disciples in a closed room. He invites them to examine his wounds and breathes on them, transmitting to them the Holy Spirit, and gives them the power to forgive sins.
So far John presents a mashup of altered elements from both Matthew and Luke, particularly the latter. Mary Magdalene is the first to see Jesus, as Mary and the other Mary are the first in Matthew. She does not recognize him at first, just as the disciples on the way to Emmaus did not recognize him in Luke. As in Luke he appears to the disciples when they are gathered together in Jerusalem, but rather than promising the baptism of the Holy Spirit he breathes the Holy Spirit into them. In John Jesus indicates he will ascend, and in Luke he does ascend. Contra Matthew and Luke, John omits any mention of the disciples disbelieving Mary.
Continuing his narrative, John says the disciples later tell their story to their fellow disciple Thomas, who was not there when Jesus appeared to them. Thomas does not believe them. Jesus reappears eight days later when Thomas is present with the others and persuades Thomas by asking him to touch his wounds. This mirrors Luke’s description of Jesus asking the disciples to touch his wounds to prove he is not a spirit, but contradicts John’s earlier account of Jesus discouraging of Mary Magdalene from touching him. The author then remarks that Jesus did many other “signs” before the disciples and that he wrote to convince his readers Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.
This seems like an ending, but there follows yet another scene, in which Jesus appears on the shore while the disciples are fishing on the Sea of Galilee. This brings the story to Galilee, which is where Matthew has Jesus appear to the collected disciples. The disciples don’t recognize him until he tells them to drop their nets again and they catch a huge haul of fish, again recalling Luke’s theme of delayed recognition. Peter jumps in the water and swims to Jesus. They all have breakfast together, similar to when Luke has Jesus eat a fish in front of the disciples. John notes this seaside scene is the third time Jesus appeared to the disciples.
John ends this final scene with Jesus telling Peter three times to feed his sheep and predicts his hands will be bound against his will when he is older. They have an exchange about another disciple, who the author notes is bearing witness to these events. The author also remarks that Jesus did innumerable other things, similar to Luke’s description of Jesus presenting himself alive to them “by many convincing proofs.” John has no scene of Jesus ascending into heaven, and no apparent terminus to his time spent with the disciples.
The stories in the three gospels are hard to reconcile with each other. Where did Jesus first appear and to whom? How many times did he appear and how long did he stay around? What exactly were his instructions to the disciples? Did the disciples stay in Jerusalem or go back to Galilee? The answers to these questions do not fit together. They read as though each author decided Mark needed an ending depicting Jesus appearing to the disciples after his death, and so each created their own version in line with their own literary objectives. John seems to know Luke, or at least is familiar with the same kinds of themes, but still offers a very different account.
Given their significant divergences and extraordinary character, I don’t think it is possible to draw any secure inferences about historical events from the gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. As they take pains to present a physical Jesus, they are also hard to reconcile with Paul’s description of resurrected bodies as “spiritual” and the risen Jesus as a “living spirit.” In fact, in Luke’s gospel Jesus’ invitation to touch him comes as a direct response to the disciples’ fear that they were seeing a “spirit.” It is also hard to reconcile the gospels with Paul’s list of appearances: to Peter as the first witness, to five hundred together at one time (unless on the mountain in Galilee?), and to James, unless, as I mentioned previously, this was James the apostle who was with the other apostles at one of Jesus’ appearances to them collectively. They do agree with Paul that Jesus appeared to the disciples when they were together. (I think that is what Paul suggests in his list by using a collective noun, “the twelve,” or writes “all of the apostles,” although he may mean they all experienced Jesus but at various times.) In sum, as historical evidence the gospel accounts do not add very much.
Before summarizing my assessment of the evidence in the above sections, I want to add one more bit of information. Paul plays a large part in the second half of the Acts of the Apostles, which describes his life from being a persecutor of Christians, through his conversion, to his missionary journeys. The book features three separate accounts of the “appearance” of Jesus that caused Paul’s conversion. All three, with slight variations, say that a “light from heaven” flashed around Paul and he heard the voice of Jesus speaking to him. Paul did not know Jesus during the latter’s earthly life, so he attributes the voice to Jesus because that is what the voice tells him. The accounts differ on what the men with Paul experience: either they hear “the sound” but cannot understand it and see nothing, or they see the light but don’t hear the voice, or they get knocked to the ground by the light along with Paul.
We don’t have any indication of how Luke knew this story. Luke does not seem to have known Paul. He is estimated to have written Acts about three decades after Paul wrote the letters we have from him, and the theology in Paul’s speeches in Acts does not match Paul’s theology in his letters very well. (Ehrman, 2012: 171-172) Luke does attach enough importance to the story to recount it three times, which might indicate that he thought it was close to the truth of what happened. Even if that is what he thought, we have no way to judge if he was correct.
With that caveat, there is one feature I want to highlight in these stories. In all three versions Paul’s experience involve a light and a voice. That is nothing like the appearances of Jesus in the gospels; he doesn’t see or touch Jesus or witness him eating something. This would indicate that for at least one follower of Jesus–the author of Acts–a light and a voice are sufficient to establish an appearance of the risen Jesus. This is additional piece of evidence I will use in my assessment.
Conclusions
In this final section I offer my assessment of the evidence discussed above, leaning primarily on Paul’s list of Jesus’ appearances and supplementing that with a few details from the stories in the gospels and Acts.
Paul’s list in 1 Corinthians convinces me that, beginning with Peter, multiple members of the early Christian community reported they experienced the risen Jesus over an indeterminate period of time. Those members may have included one or more of the other apostles, and possibly other disciples such as Mary Magdalene. They certainly included Paul.
Peter’s experience seems to have been so powerful to him that he was inspired to rally the faith of other disciples and to establish or contribute to his role as one of the most prominent leaders of the early Christian community. Paul’s experience convinced him Jesus was the Messiah and that Paul had a responsibility to bring the Christian message to the Gentiles.
Multiple disciples at the same time and place may have experienced what they interpreted as the risen Jesus. I base this on the several accounts of such an event: three in Paul’s list and the accounts in the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. Such a group experience has modern parallels. One example would be the 1917 “miracle of the sun” that took place in Fatima, Portugal, in connection with alleged visions of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Another is the Pentecostal and charismatic revivals of modern times in which crowds of people gathered together in worship have simultaneous unusual experiences they attribute to the Holy Spirit.
Many of the experiences reported by disciples could have been ambiguous, such as a flash of light or a disembodied voice as reported by Luke of Paul’s experience. I base this partially on the gospel descriptions of disciples who did not initially recognize they were encountering Jesus and disciples who doubted what they saw or what they heard reported to them. It would also fit modern cases in which people report experiences they interpret as something familiar within their culture, such as a visitation by a UFO, but which they describe with details that are ambiguous such as lights moving across the sky in unfamiliar ways.
Finally, although I don’t find anything convincing in the stories of resurrection appearances in the three gospels, I do want to note that none of them mention anyone actually witnessing Jesus’ resurrection or his emergence from the tomb.
In sum, I think an initial report by Peter of an appearance by Jesus touched off a contagion of reports that were also interpreted that way, but that could have been more ambiguous in character. On the next page I will explore the question of whether Paul’s experience came upon him unexpectedly while he was in a normal state of consciousness, as depicted in the Acts of the Apostles, or in some way he induced himself to have a spiritual vision. This could also tell us something about Peter’s experience as well.
Jesus Reconstructed 