120 Things ABC CBS CNN FOX and NBC Won't Tell You" Cont..
49. The disciples truly believed they saw Jesus alive again after his death.
Ankerberg: Is it a fact that the disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus? Do most critical scholars accept that as a fact?
Witherington: Alright. Now this is where it becomes to get a little fuzzy. Some people want to talk about the appearances of Jesus as visions. And what the word visions connotes to a 20th century person, is some kind of subjective impression in the back of your cerebral cortex, that doesn’t necessarily correspond with anything objective out there in reality beyond your own head. When a first century person talked about visions, they did not necessarily mean something radically subjective like that. They meant seeing something that was real, a part from your own psyche, that was out there, that you hadn’t previously seen. That’s normally what the word "vision" means. It’s the revelation of a reality that’s beyond yourself that you hadn’t notice, or hadn’t been unveiled to your eyes before. So most scholars would certainly say that the disciples believed that they saw Jesus, and many of them would want to just leave it there and say okay, it was subjective phenomenon that happened here. But if you interpret those Gospel documents about the resurrection appearances of the risen Lord. And you interpret the Pauline evidence, the rest of the New Testament evidence, they were claiming far more than that. They were claiming to actually have a physical encounter with Jesus after his death. And that he ate, was tangible, could be touched, that he was still moving in space and time as a real person. So they were claiming more than just having had a vision of Jesus.
Ankerberg: Yeah, I think that’s a good point, because a drunk can say that he’s seeing pink elephants, and he probably is, but that doesn’t mean they’re there. So what is the difference here? They believed it, but how do you know they were actually seeing something?
Witherington: Well, in terms of the psychological profile of the disciples, if we believe that it is true that they denied, deserted and betrayed Jesus, that they had given him up for lost when he died on the cross, psychologically, something significant had to have happened to change all of their minds about this particular issue after the crucifixion of Jesus. Because, remember, no early Jews were looking for a crucified Messiah. If you wanted to scotch the rumor that Jesus was Messiah, get him crucified, that would prove that he was cursed, not blessed by God, not the anointed one of God. So here they are, completely shattered, their world has been turned upside down, they’ve spent the last year, two years, three years of their life, apparently for nothing, following Jesus. What was going to change that opinion? Something from outside of themselves had to impact them like a sledgehammer, hitting them over the head to change their mind about the fact that Jesus was dead and gone. Something dramatic had to have happened. A German scholar once said you need to posit an X big enough between the death of Jesus and the birth of the early church to explain the connection. If you don’t posit an X big enough, then you haven’t explained the historical connection.
Ankerberg: Is there any doubt among scholars that the message that was preached by those people that had fled and now were standing up in Jerusalem or the early church, that the message was Jesus rose from the dead, we saw him, he’s alive?
Witherington: Well, again, I’m sure there must be a few folks out there that would say this is not what the early Christians were claiming. But the vast majority of scholars, whether they believe this claim or not, whether they are liberal, or moderate, or conservative scholars, would say, yes, this is certainly the heart of what early Christians were preaching: that Jesus is the risen Lord.
50. No current naturalistic explanation for the resurrection works.
Ankerberg: Is there any naturalistic explanation that scholars have brought up to replace the resurrection that is more plausible than what the disciples said?
Witherington: Well, in my mind there’s nothing more plausible. There’s other explanations, and they have varying degrees of possibility or plausibility. But certainly none, I think, are sufficient to account for the phenomenon of the rise of early Christianity.
Ankerberg: Well, one of them is that Jesus didn’t die on the cross, he just swooned. What would you say about that?
Witherington: Well, even if that were true, if Jesus were a true human being, which everybody agrees that he was, and that he went on to die at some point, so it’s neither here nor there if there was a sort of false start on Jesus’ death, you know. It’s neither here nor there about that particular point. But the truth of the matter is that the way the Romans did public executions, a) flagellation, b) crucifixion, many victims never even survived the flagellation, never mind the crucifixion. The idea that in a public execution during a Passover feast, which according to all the traditions we have was guarded by Roman soldier or soldiers, that that person could have survived that, and been revived in the cool of the tomb, I mean the chances of that are more historically remote than the chances that Julius Caesar was actually the god, Neptune.
51. Paul was not predisposed to believe in Jesus.
Ankerberg: You’re a scholar in terms of doing a lot of study on Paul. And Paul is a real mystery to a lot of scholars, because the psychological profile of Paul, there’s no reason why he would have become a Christian, there had to be that X again. Describe for the folks that are listening what we’re talking about.
Witherington: Well, remember Saul’s background. He’s a Hebrew among Hebrews, that means he spoke that traditional language of Hebrew or Aramaic; he’s a Pharisee among Pharisees, that means he belonged to one of the strictest sects of early Judaism, very punctiliar about obedience to the Mosaic law, down to the last jot and tittle, and even more traditions than that. We’re talking about a person who according to his own testimony in Galatians 1, was a persecutor of early Christianity, persecuted it violently he says in Galatians chapter 1, and of course Acts confirms this as well as a secondary piece of evidence. What kind of thing could have happened to him to change him from all out zealot against the early Messianic movement that we call Christianity to a strong zealous advocate of the same? Some dramatic about face, u-turn had to have happened to Paul on Damascus road. And I know of no better term to describe this than conversion. It’s not true, of course, that he was going from no beliefs to Christian beliefs. It’s not true that he was going from a false religion to a true religion. What he believed was that he was becoming a completed Messianic Jewish person, and that the belief that Jesus was that Messiah figure was the missing piece of the puzzle that completed the picture, and rearranged the whole way that he would look at life. Previously he had looked at life through the lens of the law, now he was going to see life through the eyes of Christ.
Now I know of no better way to explain that kind of dramatic shift in a person’s life than to say he had a close encounter of the first kind with the risen Jesus, and that’s what changed his life. What’s interesting to me is that even some of the recent Jewish scholars who have dealt with Saul of Tarsus have been willing to say something dramatic had to happen to him to cause this change.
Ankerberg: Where is modern scholarship in terms of evaluating what happened to Paul? Where are the majority of scholars, in other words, what do they attribute to the conversion of Paul?
Witherington: Well, you know, there used to be this old psychological profile. Saul was an angst ridden person, guilt ridden because he had persecuted some of his fellow Jews, who had become Christian, and agonizing over all of that, he converted to Christianity through wrestling through his own guilt. Now the thing that’s interesting to me about that is that Paul himself says nothing to suggest this, and the book of Acts says nothing like that. He was going to Damascus to persecute some more Christians. He was not going to Damascus to join them. And so, you know, the evidence as we have it suggests that something other than a sort of psychological process along the way is what changed his life.
52. Jesus certainly had more than just 12 supporters.
Ankerberg: When Jesus went up to Jerusalem at Passover, did the crowds really greet him? Did he have a big following? In The Search for Jesus it sounded like there was very few people that were following him and there weren’t a whole lot of people that turned out for him. What do you think the evidence shows?
Witherington: Well, on this one I would have to say that there’s this core of followers of Jesus, there’s the twelve, plus the women, plus a somewhat larger circle of followers including some Judean followers, like we have Mary and Martha who lived in Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem. We have Lazarus who lived in Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem. We have Simon, we have others that seemed to have been Judean followers. So yes, there’s a coterie of followers of Jesus, there’s no doubt about that. But they are going up to Passover with the Galilean pilgrims. There’s no doubt about that as well. So certainly it’s true that the crowds were much larger than the circle of Jesus’ followers. Now, I have no way of knowing, historically how much of the crowd were actually adherents of Jesus. What I do know is that the acclamations that are made in our earliest gospel, in Mark, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, were the acclamations that would be made as a person goes up to Passover feast.
Now, Mark is one of those subtle kind of documents where he sees this as ironic. It’s possible that the crowds were saying more than they knew. I think that’s historically very likely to be true. We later knew that what they were claiming actually referred to Jesus. The disciples already had an inkling that that was true. I don’t know that I could say that Jesus’ followers was just a tiny group of people. I have no way of doing a specific head count. What I do know is that when Jesus was crucified, all of his followers, so far as we know, except some of the women, abandoned him.
53. Jesus knew he was going to die when he went to Jerusalem for the Passover.
Ankerberg: Ben, why did Jesus go up to Jerusalem? He’d avoided it for a long time, then at Passover he went up there?
Witherington: Well, according to the gospel of John, from time to time he did go up for the festivals. But, you know, there are pieces of gospel evidence that suggest that Jesus saw himself in a prophetic light, without a doubt, and even, indeed said, it’s not done for a prophet to die anywhere outside of Jerusalem. If he did see himself in a prophetic light and believed that his prophetic message was for the whole people of Israel, then you need to go to stage center. You need to go and make your teachings or do your prophetic signs in a place where all the people would be, and no better time than Passover, perhaps the biggest of all the Jewish festivals. This was the time, this was the place for him to present himself to the people of God, make his claims directly and indirectly, and do what he was going to do.
Ankerberg: Do you think he knew he was going to die?
Witherington: Oh, I don’t think it would have taken a clairvoyant to know that in a politically volatile environment, that if you go around doing the kind of things Jesus did, and saying the kind of things Jesus did about the coming of the kingdom of God, that you could anticipate a violent end to your life. There’s no doubt about that. But also, a lot of the things Jesus said didn’t just have a political edge to them, they had a spiritual edge to them, and what they suggested is that Judaism needed a radical make-over, and that also was an unwelcome message.
54. When Jesus cleansed the temple, it may have been a prophetic sign that the Temple would be coming down.
Ankerberg: What has traditional Christianity always said about this series of events: he goes up to Passover in Jerusalem, then all of a sudden you have the turning over of the money tables. What was that all about?
Witherington: Well, there’s sort of two schools of thought about what Jesus did in the temple. A. It was a cleansing of the temple. That is, unlike the Qumranites, Jesus did not think that the temple was irredeemable, that you needed to sort of level it and start over from scratch, that it needed some sort of spiritual cleansing or you know some kind of tune up or fixing of the corruption in the temple and then it would be okay.
Or the more radical interpretation would be that what Jesus was doing was a prophetic sign act indicating that this temple is coming down. It’s going to be radically judged by God, it’s going to be destroyed and after that God will start over again. Now, you know I have wavered back and forth between these two interpretations. You could take the evidence we have in the gospels either way. But my best reading of it is that what Jesus does is a prophetic sign act. Because what he’s done is interrupted the process, not only of tribute money that supports the institution and allows it to exist, the temple as an institution, but he’s interrupted the process that leads to the sacrifices. Now if you’ve interrupted the process that leads to the sacrifices, what you’ve, in fact, done, is sort of put a period or a stop right into the middle of the most essential process of redemption in Israel. So I think it is a prophetic sign act. He didn’t cleanse the whole area, it was probably an action done in a limited corner of the huge courts, but nonetheless an effective prophetic sign act.
55. The Jewish priests and Pilate both had reasons to want Jesus dead.
Ankerberg: Everyone agrees that Jesus came to Jerusalem for Passover. By the end of the week he was dead. Who wanted him executed? Was it the Jewish priests, or the Romans?
Witherington: Well, I don’t think that’s a yes or no proposition. I think that a lot of people could have wanted him dead. Let’s take the example of Saul for a minute, as a persecutor of Christians before his conversion. The truth of the matter, when we’re dealing with a figure like a zealous Jew is, that they were even willing to persecute their own fellow Jews, that didn’t believe like they did, because they saw them as a threat to the existence of Judaism or to the political status quo, or to a host of other things. So it’s perfectly plausible to say, there were both Jews and non-Jews that could have wanted a figure like Jesus dead. Pilate would have wanted him off the scene primarily because it upset the political status quo and could upset his ruling of the province. If there was an uprising at the feet of a Messianic figure named Jesus, then he’s got to bring down the troops from Syria, he’s got to go through a whole elaborate process of restabilizing an unstable military situation and so on. Rather nip it in the bud. Cut of the head and the body dies, well, and so from Pontius Pilate’s point of view there was a good reason to execute Jesus, if he was any kind of Messianic pretender at all.
Ankerberg: Was Pontius Pilate keeping his eye on Jesus?
Witherington: Well, I think it’s fair to say that somebody was. What we know from the gospels is that there were two kinds of people keeping their eye on Jesus. There were the Pharisees, and there were the Herodians. Presumably the Herodians were those who in fact reported to Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, and he in turn would have had to have dealing with Pontius Pilate. But the Pharisees were closely connected to the temple. They certainly could have reported to the Jewish authorities. I think Pilate’s evidence would have been indirect rather than direct, but he had at least two sources of information, Herod’s people or the Jewish authorities.
56. Some kind of Jewish religious trial of Jesus makes sense.
Ankerberg: A lot of people say that the trials of Jesus before the Jewish high priest never took place. Why?
Witherington: Well, you need to understand that there’s a long history of an anti-Semitic reading of why Jesus had to die, and who was responsible for this. Even into the 20th century where we’ve had the holocaust where millions of Jews were killed during World War II under the label Christ-killers, so this is a very volatile issue. And it’s very understandable that scholars would want to walk though this minefield extremely carefully. The evidence as we have it suggests the Jews did not execute Jesus, let me make that perfectly clear, the Romans executed Jesus, and I don’t think this should cause us to start an anti-Italian movement, you know. The Romans executed Jesus under the aegis of the power of Pontius Pilate. Was there some kind of preliminary Jewish hearing or religious trial of Jesus? Perfectly possible. There would be plenty of reason for them to do so if Jesus was even remotely like the way the gospels present him: a public figure, a dynamic public figure, a miracle worker, at least implicitly making some kind of Messianic claims. Of course this threatened the Jewish authorities, whether in Galilee or Judea. Of course they would be interested in what would be the case with him, and they would be afraid that their own limited power under Roman rule would be compromised by such a charismatic figure, who answered to no other authority figures. And so a trial, or at least some kind of preliminary hearing of Jesus is perfectly plausible, especially in the volatile atmosphere where you’ve got not the normal, oh 60,000 people or less who normally lived in Jerusalem, but 250,000, 300,000 people, more people, who have come for the festival and highly tense situation. Under those kinds of circumstances the Jewish authorities could certainly have pushed the panic button and had a trial of Jesus.
57. The trial(s) of Jesus would not have been particularly private.
Ankerberg: How did Matthew, Mark, Luke, John know what was said in these private trials?
Witherington: Now that’s a very good question. I think that in a way we have inside information suggested to us in several of the gospel traditions. In the fourth gospel we have this person called the beloved disciple, whom we are told at one time in the account has some kind of relationship with the house of Caiaphas, can even enter the house of Caiaphas. It’s possible he was present. But what we know more assuredly, is that there are figures like Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea whom we are told were at least sympathizers with Jesus, according to the tradition they are the ones who actually arranged for the burial of Jesus. They surely would have been present at the Sanhedrin trial, and they could have heard those sorts of things. In terms of the Roman trial, the Roman trial was a public trial. It happened in front of a large crown of people. And there would be official rescripts afterwards, telling about the verdict and reasons for the verdict as well. |
