"I'm Back"

[A paper on theories about the Resurrection of Jesus]

Donald H.J. Hermann

The theme of return suggested by the statement "I'm Back" has reoccurred in human history. Modern history records the return of General McArthur to the Philippines in World War II after his earlier departure from the islands with the promise of "I shall return." In more recent times there was the return of Richard Nixon to the American political scene and his election to the presidency after promising never to return when he declared "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore. Just think how much you're going to be missing."

However the theme of return is not limited to modern history but indeed strongly echoes throughout classical mythology and human history. Moreover, the theme of return is firmly established in our culture with the story of the Resurrection of Jesus. An account of the Resurrection of Jesus occurs in all four gospels of the Christian Scripture. Luke presents such an account in Chapter 24, verses 1-8:

Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulcher, bringing the spices they had prepared, and certain others with them.

And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcher. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed there about, behold two men stood by them in shining garments. And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces in the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?

He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spoke unto you when he was yet in Galilee. Saying, the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words.

Over the centuries for many the resurrection of the physical body of Jesus is a miracle, a supernatural occurrence which needs no further explanation. For cynics, skeptics and agnostics the story of the resurrection is at best a myth or at worst a hoax.

Yet for many believers, the resurrection of Jesus remains a compelling theological subject that merits reconsideration in light of the quest for the historical Jesus. A recurring focus of speculation among biblical scholars is the effort to provide a naturalistic theory of the resurrection of Jesus. This involves the establishment of an alternative explanation in place of one based on a miracle or supernatural occurrence. The supernatural explanation is replaced by an alternative explanation involving a natural event or occurrence. The effort to provide a naturalistic explanation of the resurrection has involved a number of contemporary scholars, but it is not a new phenomenon. The English philosopher David Hume argued that natural explanations of miracles are more likely than supernatural ones, and surely the resurrection of Jesus had such a natural explanation. A group of naturalists of the 18th Century maintained that the body of Jesus, who was not dead, was taken down from the cross, bound tightly with graveclothes and placed in a tomb for three days. Jesus then recovered sufficient strength to unwrap the graveclothes, roll back a stone covering the grave, and appear to his disciples in such a way that the disciples believed Jesus had returned from the dead. Similarly, many german theologians writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century favored such theories as recognized by Albert A. Schweitzer in his work The Quest of the Historical Jesus.

The consensus among contemporary biblical scholars is that the earliest followers of Jesus believed that they had experienced their risen Lord. Accordingly, there is a general view that any attempt to explain the experience of resurrection in natural terms must adequately account for the conviction of the early followers of Jesus that they had experienced his resurrection.

A significant contribution to the contemporary discussion of the Resurrection of Jesus has been provided by John Dominic Crossan, an Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University of Chicago who has authored a number of books on the life of Jesus including The Historical Jesus: The Life of A Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. Crossan has argued that Jesus was probably never properly buried following his crucifixion. According to Crossan this would likely be the case because Jesus was a Jewish peasant. Crossan maintains that individuals who were crucified were usually left on the cross or buried in shallow graves, in either case left to be eaten by wild animals. Crossan casts doubt on the account of the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea, maintaining that such a burial likely was no more than a pious hope of the followers of Jesus. Crossan writes: "Nobody knew what had happened to Jesus' body. And the best his followers could initially hope for was that he had been buried out of Jewish piety. . Crossan concludes: "With regard to the body of Jesus, by Easter Sunday morning, those who cared did not know where it was, and those who knew did not care." According to Crossan, the gospels do not relay accurate historical information concerning either Jesus' death or his burial but reflect the struggle of Jesus' followers to make sense of his death and "their continuing experience of empowerment by him."

Crossan and others seeking a naturalistic explanation of the resurrection do not deny that the followers of Jesus had experienced what they thought were appearances of Jesus after his crucifixion. For such scholars, it is sufficient to view these experiences as internal realizations or convictions. Thus the explanation is that the followers of Jesus firmly believed that the risen Jesus had appeared to them. Whether these appearances or states of mind are viewed as visions or hallucinations, they did not involve the physical presence of Jesus. According to this explanation the followers of Jesus became convinced that Jesus was raised from the dead perhaps as a result of enthusiastic assertion or contagious conviction of key apostles such as Peter, who maintained that Jesus was alive. In turn, Peter's experience is explained as a revelation that Jesus had been exalted and glorified by god leading to Peter's proclamation that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

Perhaps one of the most interesting speculation on the resurrection of Jesus appeared not in a scholarly religious publication but in the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1991 [Vol. 21, no. 2, p. 167] in an article entitled "Resurrection or Resuscitation?" by Margaret Lloyd Davies and Trevor A. Lloyd Davies. The article develops the hypothesis that Jesus lost consciousness, causing the official bystanders to conclude that he was dead. After being taken down from the cross, it is argued that Jesus was revived and treated.

The authors suggest that the flogging of Jesus prior to the crucifixion would have resulted in shock with blood pressure and pulse pressure lowered. It is noted that Jesus was too weak to carry the cross-piece of the cross to the place of execution. According to the Lloyd-Davies, Jesus' forearms just above the wrists were nailed to the cross-piece and then the cross-piece was inserted into the vertical part of the cross. Jesus' buttocks rested on a projecting platform and his knees were hoisted sideways to facilitate the nailing of his ankle between the tibia and Achilles tendon.

Three hours after the erection of the cross, Jesus gave out a cry. The bystanders were in no doubt that Jesus had died. According to the Lloyd-Davies, death from crucifixion usually took from three to four days from prolonged inability to breathe against the gravitational pull of the hanging body. The authors note that it is only in the gospel of John that there is an account of a soldier thrusting a spear into Jesus' side resulting in an emission of blood and water. The authors do note that an early Church Father, Origen (A.D. 185-254) believed Jesus was dead when the blood and water were emitted, although Origen pointed out that corpses usually do not bleed.

Throughout the nineteenth century various efforts were made to establish the cause of Jesus' death such as a ruptured heart or acute dilation of the stomach as a result of shock or that the cause was thrombotic or arrhythmic in nature, or possibly the result of severe exhaustion and hypovolemic shock. In 1948, WB Primrose, a senior anesthetist at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in an article entitled "A surgeon looks at the crucifixion" in the Hobart Journal (v. 47, p. 387), similarly suggested that Jesus did not die on the cross and that somatic activities were maintained at a very low level and that after apparent death Jesus recovered when placed in the tomb intended for Joseph of Arimathea.

The Lloyd-Davies assert that the physical abuse Jesus received as a result of his being flogged and tortured resulted in his inability to carry the cross-piece of his cross as usually would have been the case with a person condemned to be crucified. Jesus collapsed on the cross earlier than usually would be the case because he was in shock. He lost consciousness because of diminished blood supply to the brain. The Lloyd-Davies maintain that Jesus' ashen skin and immobility were mistaken for death, but there is no doubt that the bystanders believed he was dead. The cry of Jesus may have been no more than a loud expiration. The authors surmise that the oxygen supply to the brain remained minimal, but above a critical level, until the circulation was restored when Jesus was taken down from the Cross.

So far this discussion has focused on the alternatives of supernatural or natural explanations of the resurrection of Jesus. A shift in categories of understanding was offered in the nineteenth century by David Frederick Strauss, who suggested two different categories for interpreting the gospels: rather than supernatural or natural, Strauss maintained that the resurrection should be understood either as mythic or historical. For Strauss to understand the resurrection of Jesus as myth involves a synthesis of supernaturalism (explanatory miracle) and rationalism (naturalistic theory). Strauss did not attribute the nonhistorical or supernatural view of the disciple of Jesus to deliberate deception but to unconscious mythic imagination. Strauss noted that the gospel narratives were not written until well after the events depicted had occurred and were likely enhanced by a period of oral retelling and later religious reflection. Strauss maintained that the gospel story of the resurrection is poetic in form and mythic in substance, not historical.

A contemporary religious scholar, N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham and former professor at Oxford and Cambridge, has written The Resurrection of the Son of God published in 2003, the third volume of his theology, "Christian Origins and the Question of God" in which he asserts that the historical claims to the physical resurrection of Jesus are established by the combination of the empty tomb and the subsequent sightings of the risen Jesus. While neither of these by themselves would constitute a sufficient cause for resurrection belief according to Bishop Wright, taken together, they do. Implicitly rejecting David Hume's argument that natural explanations are always more likely than supernatural ones, Bishop Wright finds the supernatural explanation of Jesus' resurrection more compelling. Wright suggests that scholars like Crossan are faced by the need to account for the empty tomb by such explanations as a shallow grave and argue that the appearances of Jesus can be explained as visions or delusions. The naturalistic explanations become compounded while the supernatural account has the simplicity of explanation which is a matter recognized as generally significant by contemporary theorists. Bishop Wright concludes:

We come at last to the final move in the chess game. How as a historian, do I explain these two facts as I take them to be: The empty tomb and the appearances and visions of Jesus. The easiest explanation by far is that these things happened because Jesus really was raised from the dead, and the disciples really did meet him, even though his body was renewed and transformed so that now it seemed to be able to live in two dimensions at once (That indeed, is perhaps the best way to understand the phenomenon: Jesus was now living in God's dimension and ours, or if you like, heaven and earth, simultaneously.)

The resurrection of Jesus does in fact provide a sufficient explanation for the empty tomb and the meetings with Jesus. Having examined all the other possible hypotheses I've read about anywhere in the literature, I think it's also a necessary explanation."

Whether one approaches the question of the resurrection of Jesus from the supernatural, natural, mythical or historical, it is the meaning of the resurrection for the Christian and the church that is the matter of ultimate significance. There is nothing improper in exploring medical hypotheses about the death of Jesus. Nor is it wrong to look at ancient practices of crucifixion and burial for possible explanation for the phenomena of Jesus' resurrection. It is true that some believers adhere to a tradition that links their faith to a literal accuracy of the words of Scripture and to what is taken as the necessary empirical implications of the words of the gospel narratives. However, others accept the application of historical and literary analyses to scriptural texts. There is perhaps an analogy between those who would not claim historical or scientific significance for the account of creation provided in the first two chapters of Genesis and those who do not claim literal or historical validity in the gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus.

DONALD H.J. HERMANN

The author is currently Professor of Law and Philosophy at DePaul University. Previously, he served on the faculties of the University of Kentucky and University of Washington. The author’s undergraduate degree is in Economics and History from Stanford University. His legal education was completed at Columbia University, and he has a graduate law degree from Harvard University. The author received his degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Northwestern University. He subsequently studied art history and earned the Masters of Art degree in Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master’s degree in liberal arts from the University of Chicago. Mr. Hermann has published extensively in law journals, and he is author of several books including: Mental Health Law in a Nutshell, Legal Aspects of AIDS, and The Insanity Defense: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives. His forthcoming book Sexual Orientation and the Law will be published by LEXIS-NEXIS MATTHEW BENDER. A member of The Chicago Literary Club since 2000, Mr. Hermann previously has presented four papers to the Club.