TWO DAYS AFTER THE Crucifixion of Jesus, on April 9, AD30, a perplexing event occurred. According to one story the dead Christ was reborn. The Resurrection was a physical event, a reality that occurred in a given place at a specific time. What evidence is there for this phenomenon, the cardinal belief of Christianity? Are there other possibilities? Did something entirely different happen?

These are the questions that Geza Vermes sets out to explore in this deceptively slender volume. His main concern is to establish facts, a feat he accomplishes through concise textual analysis and precise arguments. Vermes, an authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls and a renowned scholar of the Bible, dissects what the Old and New Testaments say about resurrection, and how Saint Paul propagated the idea, with an acute eye for detail. The forensic historian takes us step by step through crucial episodes from the Crucifixion to the treatment of the body, from the accounts of the witnesses to the visions of the Disciples. The end product is as compelling as it is revealing.

The idea of resurrection was not uncommon in the Jewish world during the time of Jesus. In fact, the concept of the corporeal revival of the dead, the reunification of the soul and the material body of a dead person, is a Jewish idea. It appears in the Hebrew Bible as a metaphor, first used by the Prophet Ezekiel. The Book of the Kings tells the story of the wonder-working prophets, Elijah and Elisha, who brought back to life two young boys. There are other stories that confirm that the phenomenon of resurrection was not out of place in the environment inhabited by Jesus and his followers. Thus Saint Paul, who is largely responsible for the religious construction of Christianity, had a pool of ideas to draw from.

In various Synoptic gospels dealing with resurrection, we encounter Jesus's own ideas on the subject. For Jesus, resurrection amounts to nothing more than spiritual survival, as can be seen from His debate with the Sadducees. Corporeal resurrection played no part in His thinking, asserts Vermes. In the Gospel of John, resurrection becomes a bloody affair: “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” This “cannibalistic allegory”, Vermes writes, would have made the Palestinian Jews sick with nausea. The resurrection narratives in Luke, Matthew and Mark take us even farther from Jesus's own notion of resurrection and vary considerably from each other. So we are left with two basic questions. Which narratives are we to believe? And which particular notion of resurrection are we to accept?

The details provided by the New Testament give us the following picture of what happened on the days in question. Jesus died on the cross on April 7. Immediately after his death, the body was buried in a tomb according to prevailing custom. The anointing of His body was postponed because of the Sabbath. Forty hours later a group of women came to complete the funeral rites. They found the tomb was empty. On the third day after His death, His resurrected body appeared to His apostles, although they first thought it was a ghost.

We have two sources of evidence here. The first comes from the testimony of female witnesses who say they went to Jesus's tomb and found it empty. The identity, number and actual accounts of female witnesses differ in the various Gospels. The second circumstantial evidence, given in all Gospels except Mark, consists of a series of visions of individuals and groups at various times and places. That the visions actually relate to resurrection is not obvious, either. Indeed, many Apostles declined to believe in these visions. As evidence for resurrection this does not amount to very much.

Vermes's conclusion is emphatic: “Not even a credulous non-believer is likely to be persuaded by the various reports of the Resurrection; they convince only the already converted.”

What else could have happened? We are offered six theories by way of explanation. The female witnesses went to the wrong tomb. The body of Jesus was stolen by his Disciples or removed by someone unconnected with Him. Jesus was buried alive and later left the tomb, or even Judaea itself. And the visions of the apostles suggest a spiritual and not a bodily resurrection.

The problem is that none of the alternative theories can be proved with convincing evidence, either. Vermes is thus forced to opt for a more mystical interpretation: Jesus was resurrected in the heart of his Disciples.

So what of Christianity without physical resurrection? For St Paul there is no Christianity without resurrection: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain and your faith also is vain,” he wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, “and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins”.

But Christianity does not hinge solely on the claim that Jesus “defeated death”. One does not have to believe in literal, physical resurrection to be moved and influenced by the teachings of Jesus. Faith may involve a leap into the spiritual and metaphysical realm, but it cannot avoid evidence altogether. The worth of a faith is judged by how it makes good things happen, not by how it sticks to things that did not happen. And how much attention it gives to respectful and reverential critics such as Geza Vermes.

The Resurrection by Geza Vermes
Penguin, £7.99; 176pp

Extract

Resurrection, or more precisely bodily resurrection, is definitely a Jewish idea. It entails the corporeal revival of the dead, the reunification of the spiritual soul and the material body of a deceased person. In the Hebrew Bible, resurrection first appears as a metaphor, symbolising the rebirth of the nation.

According to the mystical vision of the prophet Ezekiel, it depicts the figurative clothing with flesh of the dry bones of the people of Israel, and the blowing by God of the breath of life into the skeletal remains of a defeated, dispersed and exiled nation. The resurrection of the dry bones indicates something different from spiritual survival. It is not to be confused with the Greek (Platonic) concept of the escape of the soul from the prison of the body to proceed towards the Elysian Field of Heaven. It is not identical with the eternal life of the spirit. This idea of liberation is a familiar feature of the writings of Hellenised Jews of the Diaspora and the notion of eternal life without specifically implying a renewed presence of the body is also commonly attested in the Greek New Testament. These are ill-defined notions which must be handled with great care.

Another setting for the resurrection of the dead is provided by the awesome and majestic image of the final judgment when, at the end of the age known to man, Jewish and Christian religious visionaries imagine a universal roll call of humanity by a blazing angelic trumpet. The dead will then be restored to their former bodies and face God or His representative, variously called the Messiah, the Chosen One or the Son of Man. The task of the final Judge will be to separate the resurrected into righteous sheep and wicked goats, and assign them eternal reward or eternal punishment ... In sum, resurrection preliminary to the great judgment pertains to eschatology, to the events of the end of times. This is tantamount to stating the obvious, namely that rising from the dead is alien to man's normal, historical experience.

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