The Son Rises: Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus

THE LEGEND THEORY

Since the time of D. F. Strauss, the prevailing theory in denial of the resurrection has been that the accounts themselves are legendary. Strauss saw that it was hopeless to grant the facts and then try to cook up some natural explanation for them. Once the skeptic granted the basic historical reliability of the gospel accounts, his case was lost. Strauss therefore denied the apostolic authorship of the gospels and rejected their accounts as unhistorical legends.11 There never was an empty tomb, nor was there ever any guard around it. These are legendary stories that built up over the years. Similarly, the stories of Jesus’ appearances in the gospels are just legends. Strauss did admit that the disciples must have seen something (otherwise the list of witnesses to the appearances of Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 cannot be explained), but he dismisses these as hallucinations on the part of the disciples. Strauss believed that after Jesus’ death, the disciples went back to Galilee. By reading the Old Testament, they became convinced that the Messiah would die and rise from the dead. Since they believed Jesus was the Messiah, they thought he would surely rise. So eventually they had hallucinations of him. Much later they returned to Jerusalem to preach the resurrection, and by that time the location of Jesus’ tomb had apparently been forgotten. The gospel accounts that we have were written much later and are unhistorical legends that accumulated over the years.

This then is the real issue in contemporary scholarship. The position of the most influential New Testament critic of this century, Rudolf Bultmann, with regard to the resurrection is virtually indistinguishable from that of Strauss. Modern critics who deny the resurrection have followed Strauss in arguing that the resurrection of Jesus is a legend.

In summary, then, we have seen that the history of the debate over the resurrection of Jesus has produced several dead ends in the attempt to explain away the evidence of the resurrection. The conspiracy theory, the apparent death theory, the wrong tomb theory, and their variations have all proved inadequate as plausible alternative explanations for the resurrection. This is of great help to us because it clears the ground for a consideration of the really crucial issue facing us today. This is Strauss’s alternative: that the resurrection of Jesus is a legend. Modern critics who deny the resurrection have stuck on Strauss’s position. If it fails, then the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection can no longer be denied. In the next three chapters, therefore, we shall conduct a searching examination of this position through a critical sifting of the positive evidence for the resurrection.