(Revised version posted on May 14, 2026)
The earliest Christian writings we have copies of are probably the letters of Paul to various Christian communities around the Mediterranean. These are also the first documents we know of that claim Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Dating such ancient literature is tricky, but most Biblical scholars think that Paul wrote the original letters in the decade of the 50s C.E., give or take a few years. That would be about twenty years after the presumed date of the death of Jesus and about fifteen years or more before the earliest written narrative of his life. Much of what we know about Christianity during those decades comes from the letters of Paul. His letters do 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. (On a future page I will have more to say about Paul’s letters, the dates assigned to them by scholars, and why only some are regarded as genuine.)
In what is called his First Letter to the Corinthians Paul bequeaths us some information about the resurrection appearances of Jesus:
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and that he was buried and 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 and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 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, English translations from the Greek are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition of the Christian Bible)
My discussion below will support two hypotheses:
H1. There was a first-century Christian tradition carefully handed down that affirmed Jesus died, was buried, and rose from the dead on the third day after his death.
H2. There were multiple reports of appearances of the risen Jesus circulating among the early Christians, the most important of which was an initial appearance to Cephas, also know as Peter or Simon.
Hypothesis 1: the tradition about the fate of Jesus
Paul’s language in the above passage of handing on and receiving information of “first importance” implies carefully passing down a tradition with a settled verbal formulation. (Bryan, 2011, 48 & n. 17; Licona, 2010: 224-229) That formulation starts with the kernel of Paul’s missionary message, that Christ 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. There are several shorter formulaic statements about Jesus being raised from the dead scattered throughout Paul’s letters, also likely of earlier origin. (Lüdemann, 2004: 32-33; Allison, 2005: 229-231; Licona, 2010: 220-223)
In this particular passage Paul 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,” five hundred Christians at one time, a “James” with no further identification, “all the apostles” (apostle means “one sent,” such as an emissary, in other words those sent by Jesus to preach his message), and then finally Paul himself. Paul is thus offering himself as one of the witnesses to an appearance. (See also 1 Cor 9:1-2).
The passage as a whole uses expressions Paul does not use elsewhere in his letters (Allison, 2005: 234; Licona, 2010: 224-225 & n. 102):
- “according to the scriptures” (Paul prefers the term “it is written”),
- “was raised” in the perfect passive tense (there are a couple of exceptions in the letters to Timothy, which many scholars do not believe were written by Paul),
- “on the third day,”
- “appeared to,” and
- “the twelve.”
- Also, “sins” in the plural is rare in Paul and in fact rare in the entire collection of canonical Christian scripture; the few exceptions occur in cases which look like quotes from early credal traditions.
The un-Pauline language used in the passage is another indication that Paul is passing down an earlier tradition.
Hypothesis 2: the appearances of Jesus
But is Paul’s list identical to what was in the traditional formula? All but one of the expressions highlighted above are in the first half of the passage, ending with “the twelve.” The exception is “appeared to,” which is in the first half of the passage and then repeated three times in the second half. The comment regarding the five hundred, “most of whom are still alive, though some have died,” in the second half of the passage looks like Paul’s interjection. A tradition composed to be carefully handed down would not indicate how many witnesses were still alive at a particular time. And consider Paul’s inclusion of himself at the end of the list. Would an earlier tradition been have passed down to Paul saying that he himself was “last of all, as to one untimely born”? (The phrase “one untimely born” compares his experience to the abortion or miscarriage of a pregnancy, apparently meaning something that occurs before one is prepared for it. See Wright, 2003: 327-329; Bryan, 2011: 52-53) Why would the originators of the tradition think he was last and why would they describe his experience as untimely? I don’t think it’s likely they did; it is more likely Paul added himself to the end of the traditional list to defend his claim to be an apostle, despite not having been one of those originally recognized as one.
These points raise the question of where the traditional list ends and Paul’s addition(s) begin. Punctuation does not help us answer the question; at that time Greek was written without punctuation so translators to modern English have to guess where sentences begin and end. The problem of where exactly the original tradition ended was in discussion as early as 1978 (Allison, 2005: 234), with most commentators holding that it ended either with “Cephas” or with “Cephas, then the twelve.” (Barclay, 1996: 16) Bart Ehrman is among those who argue 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 derived from the Jewish scriptures (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). (Ehrman, 2014: 139-142; see also Licona, 2010: 226) It is a tightly constructed set of parallel statements, which would be asymmetrical if much more was added after the mention of Cephas. That would suggest that 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.
If this argument is correct, the tradition would be the earliest source concerning who was the first to claim to have seen Jesus after his death: Cephas/Peter. Peter as a key witness to the risen Christ fits 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 in another letter (Galatians 2:9), Peter’s prominent role in the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles (I will say more about these documents in an upcoming page), and letters to early Christian communities that were purported to have been written by him. The gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as making a prediction that Peter would be the first of his disciples to regain confidence after his death:
“Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail, and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” (Lk 22: 31-32; Simon was Peter’s original name before he was renamed Cephas/Peter.)
I am not arguing that all of these references to Peter were reliably based on facts, but rather that he was important enough to have such references made. Based on the tradition Paul handed down and the evidence of Peter’s importance, 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. Paul does not describe what Peter saw, but apparently it was convincing enough to cement Peter’s place as a leader of the early church.
The subsequent mention of an appearance to “the twelve” also may have been a part of the original tradition. The conjunction between “Cephas, then (eita) to the twelve” differs from the conjunction that precedes the sentence about the five hundred and the sentence about Jame and all the apostles. The latter conjunction in Greek is epeita, which can be translated “thereafter” or “thereupon,” and is a word characteristically used by Paul in his letters (Lüdemann, 2004: 40-43; Bryan, 2011: 51-52) The inclusion of the twelve would not disrupt the balance of the parallel structure of the list very significantly. Paul has nothing more to say in his letters about the identity of “the twelve,” but as I will recount on another page, three of the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles all describe scenes of Peter seeing the risen Jesus in the company of a group of other disciples. These scenes likely trace back to knowledge of the tradition Paul recounts.
The other appearances on the list, aside from Paul’s own experience, would then be appearances that Paul learned of after receiving the original tradition. 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 later undertaking to write about Jesus, but there is no mention of it in any other source. Some Biblical scholars suggest that this is a reference to an event depicted in the Acts of the Apostles. (Lüdemann, 2004: 73-81; Allison, 2005: n. 140 on 235) In Acts 2:1-42 the disciples are gathered together on the feast of Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus’ death. They are “filled with the Holy Spirit” and begin speaking in other languages, which Jewish people from around the eastern Mediterranean who are present in Jerusalem hear and recognize. After Peter preaches to the crowd, “about three thousand” of them are baptized and join the Christian community. But other than a miracle and the huge size of the crowd in Paul’s list and in the story in Acts, there is little resemblance between the two. In one the miracle is an appearance of the risen Jesus, in the other it is speaking in various languages under the influence of the Holy Spirit. (Wright, 2003: 324-325) And five hundred people are not easily mistaken for three thousand.
Nor is there any other mention of an appearance to James in the early sources, unless this was James the apostle and he saw Jesus as one of several unnamed apostles present at one of the appearances depicted in the gospels. The lack of further identification in the list suggest he was a known figure in the Christian community. Most commentators take him to be “James, the Lord’s brother,” who Paul refers to in Galations 1:18-19 and is presumably also the James who Paul calls a “pillar of the church” along with Cephas and John in Galations 2:9. James’ status suggests he claimed to have seen the risen Jesus, but this is not made explicit in any early source. Who exactly “all the apostles” were is also unknown.
In my judgment, Peter is the only person named on Paul’s list whose experience, whatever it was, is convincingly attested as widely known and carefully handed down by the early Christians. His experience was likely the foundation for the belief in the resurrection of Jesus and the catalyst for other reports of appearances, including the appearance to “the twelve.” Once the idea of Jesus’ resurrection took hold, additional reports would have a ready audience among those who believed, no matter the substance of the reports or their lack of it. Paul may not have heard about these other reports until years later, nearer the time he wrote to the Corinthians. The reports could have been second-hand or even more remote from the alleged events. At this point all we can say is Paul knew of multiple such reports.
Sources cited
Allison, Dale C. (2005). “Resurrecting Jesus,” pp. 198-375 in Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters. T&T Clark.
Barclay, John M. G. (1996). “The Resurrection in Contemporary New Testament Scholarship,” in Gavin D’Costa, ed., Resurrection Reconsidered, pp. 13-30.
Bryan, Christopher (2011). The Resurrection of the Messiah. Oxford University Press.
Ehrman, Bart D. (2014). How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. HarperOne.
Licona, Michael R. (2010). The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. IVP Academic.
Lüdemann, Gerd (2004). The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry. Prometheus Books.
Wright, N.T. (2003). The Resurrection of the Son of God. Fortress Press.
Jesus Reconstructed 