Did 500 people really see Jesus’ alleged resurrected body?
by Ibn Anwar, BHsc (Hons)
“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” (1 Corinthians 15:17) The whole of the Christian faith according to Paul hinges on this doctrine, the belief that Jesus after having been brutally executed was raised alive or resurrected from the dead. The aforementioned verse is a challenge made against those who may have doubts concerning Jesus’ resurrection. The challenge is confidently given after some “proofs” are presented in previous verses. Among them is the remarkable claim that exactly 500 people many of whom were still alive(according to the testimony) when Paul wrote about it simultaneously witnessed the resurrection. Did 500 people indeed witness Jesus in his resurrected form?
“Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:6)
There is no ambiguity in the language above. The claim is that 500 people did indeed see Jesus after his alleged execution together at one time. Ron Rhodes like so many others who believe in the testimony supplied by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 writes:
“As noted above, Paul said the resurrected Christ appeared to more than 500 people at a single time, “most of whom are still alive” (1 Corinthians 15:6). If Paul had misrepresented the facts wouldn’t one of these 500 have come forward to dispute his claims? But no one came forward to dispute anything because the Resurrection really occurred.” [1]
A question that any reasonable person would ask when such an astounding claim as a simultaneous mass sighting is made is, “who exactly witnessed the event?” Therefore we would ask Rhodes the same question: Who exactly were those 500 who witnessed Jesus’ resurrected form? How on earth would anyone from the alleged 500 go to Paul and question the claim when he does not identify who those 500 were? Throughout Christian literature on this subject specifically covering the claim of 500 witnesses many of them essentially puts forward the exact same rhetoric, that is, none of the 500 critiqued or challenged Paul’s claim. We beg your pardon but such rhetoric is clearly absurd. Consider the following analogy:
“John gave testimony in court today that he knows that 500 people saw Matthew killed Luke. In his cross examination defense attorney Judas Iscariot questioned John’s source and demanded that he reveals the identifies of the 500, where the event took place and the exact time that the witnesses allegedly saw the murder. John provided no answers and the 500 remain completely anonymous. The court took his testimony as truth and convicts Matthew of murder in the first degree.”
The above can only take place in a fictitious world or a country that practices judicial absurdity. First of all, John’s testimony is from hearsay which is untenable by definition just like Paul’s testimony is hearsay in 1 Corinthians 15:6. Secondly, we do not know who those 500 were, where they supposedly witnessed the event and the exact time(or at least an approximation of the day and hour) of the occurrence. It is only the credulous and unthinking who would really accept such a preposterous unsubstantiated claim. The People’s New Testament in its commentary on the verse agrees with standard mainstream Christian view that Paul’s point in this verse is to prove that the resurrection was not an isolated case, but is rather something that is well attested in history by people who were still living when he was writing about it. However, it readily admits that, “This event is otherwise unknown…” [2] This is a sticking point that will not go away easily. If indeed 500 people witnessed it the story would be readily available across the board and not only in a single verse in the entire New Testament! This good point is noted by Kris Komarnitsky in his treatment of the verse:
“There is one big problem that this tradition faces. A simultaneous appearance to over 500 people should have been one of the most, or the most, momentous appearance by Jesus, and yet it does not show up anywhere else in the literature. As Gerd Ludemann says, “[It] is improbable that such an event witnessed by more than five hundred people should otherwise have left no trace.”" [3]
There is another prominent resurrection occurrence of massive proportion in the New Testament found in Matthew 27:52-53 whereby we are informed that the saints that were buried rose from their graves and walked into Jerusalem. Which honest historian accepts this narrative as historical? Even the conservative resurrection historian Michael Licona doubts its credibility, consigning it to the realm of “literary embellishment” in a debate that he had with Ustadh Ali Altae. The foremost New Testament expert Raymond Brown also doubts its historical value:
“…there is neither internal nor external evidence to cause us to affirm its historicity. The same maybe said of the rising of the holy ones and their appearance to many in Jerusalem (Matt 27:52-53)….Truth conveyed by drama can at times be more effectively impressed on people’s minds than truth conveyed by history.” [4]
The mass resurrection of saints is devalued and relegated by Christian scholars to literary embellishment which is a fanciful way of saying that it is completely fictitious. That conclusion is based on the reasonable affirmation that such a massive scale event could not possibly have been left uncorroborated by multiple attestations. In a similar fashion the supposed 500 has absolutely no backing from internal or external sources and as such should also be dismissed as nothing short of literary embellishment and fiction.The 500 are just that, the 500. They are unknown and completely anonymous. This is not a debatable point as E. P. Sanders writes:
“But despite these and other reasonable explanations of the variations, we are left with an intractable problem. The followers of Jesus were sure that he was raised from the dead, but they did not agree on who had seen him.” [5] (emphasis added)
Theologian and Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong writes:
“Who were the five hundred brethren? What happened to this tradition? It was not picked up and described in any recognizable form in any of the later Gospels. There have been attempts to identify Luke’s story of Pentecost with this Pauline reference, but no consensus has been reached. It is possible that there was a common link between this note of an appearance to five hundred and Pentecost, though a considerable journey must be made before an event that has a risen body form can be identified with one that has a Holy Spirit form. It is enough now to acknowledge that Paul’s reference to Jesus’ appearance to five hundred people at once is found nowhere in the Gospel tradition.” [6]
Yet another problem to Paul’s report is that according to Acts 1:15 Peter stood up and addressed a gathering of believers comprising only 120 members in Jerusalem. This is short of 380 who supposedly experienced the resurrection. Where were they? Were they sleeping or preoccupied with worldly menial affairs just after having such a great heavenly experience? Christians often use the argument that the followers of Jesus were willing to die for the belief in his resurrection which in and of itself proves that they were convinced of its reality. With such fervour emanating in the ranks of those who saw and experienced the resurrection why are the 380 starkly absent? This is a classic case of “you cannot have your pie and eat it too.”
Citing the noted American skeptic Thomas Paine, T. Joyner Drolsum writes:
“Thomas Paine felt that Paul’s enumeration of the witnesses to the risen Christ was not to be trusted:
“As for the account of Christ being seen by more than five hundred at once, it is Paul only who says it, and not the five hundred who say it for themselves. It is, therefore, the testimony of but one man, and that, too, of a man who did not, according to the same account, believe a word of the matter himself at the time it is said to have happened. His evidence, supposing him to have been the writer of the 15th chapter of Corinthians, where this account is given, is like that of a man who comes into a court of Justice to swear that what he had sworn before is false. A man may often see reason, and he has, too, always the right of changing his opinion; but this liberty does not extend to matters of fact..”" [7]
Is Paul even a trustworthy source to begin with especially when we are relying on him as a sole witness to a particular incident? M. Anton Mikicic writes:
“In the New Testament, Paul, who never met Jesus (Jesus died before Paul’s conversion) is in some debate with other early Christian leaders like James, Jesus’ sibling according to the gospels, as to who is preaching the “true” Jesus. So there were obviously two inconsistent points of view. Paul also defends himself against accusations he’s a liar, which suggests to me that someone called him one.
Paul’s own words suggest he felt if the end result was saving souls for the next world, it didn’t matter what you did in this world to accomplish it, including lying.” [8]
One may not agree with everything that Mikicic says in the above such as his acceptance of Jesus’ death or one might also be offended by the title of the book itself which is an attack on theism, however, the essential point that is made in the above reference is quite pertinent and valid. The last sentence is obviously a reference to the following admissions by Paul:
“But what does it matter? Nothing matters except that, in one way or another, people are told the message about Christ, whether with honest or dishonest motives, and I’m happy about that. Yes, I will continue to be happy.” (Philippians 1:18)
“But if the truth of God through my lie abounded unto his glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner?” (Romans 3:7)
To rely on Paul’s solitary testimony in 1 Corinthians 15:6 is folly as he is clearly an untrustworthy witness. Whatever the source of Paul’s 1 Corinthians 15:6 may be using it to prove the historicity of the resurrection is untenable as the proof itself is unproven and clearly unhistorical.
References:
[1] Rhodes, R. (2007). What Does the Bible Say About…?: Easy-to-Understand Answers to the Tough Questions. Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers. p. 133
[2] Boring, M. E., & Craddock, F. B. (2010). The People’s New Testament Commentary. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press. p. 543
[3] Komarnitsky, K. D. (2009). Doubting Jesus’ Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?. Draper, Utah: Stone Arrow Books. p. 96
[4] Brown, R. E. as cited in Komarnitsky, K. D. (2009). Ibid.
[5] Sanders, E. P. (1995). The Historical Figure of Jesus. London, England: Penguin Books. p. 279
[6] Spong, J. S. (1995). Resurrection Myth or Reality?: A Bishop’s Search for the Origins of Christianity. New York: HarperCollins. p. 52
[7] Drolsum, T. J. (2011). Unholy Writ: An Infidel’s Critique of the Bible. Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse. p. 110
[8] Mikicic, M. A. (2009). God is Redundant. Indianapolis, Indiana: Dog Ear Publishing. p. 98
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