Our Lord's Resurrection was real, not metaphorical
By Brian Welter

29 May 2009

The Christ from Death Arisen
by Robert Geis
University Press of America, £22.95

'History is the route we chose to show Christ as a real figure in the human community of first century Judea," writes Robert Geis, rejecting allegorical or literary interpretations of the gospels. The evangelists are historical witnesses to the risen Christ, and he shows us how that is so. In this extraordinary book Geis takes on over a century of biblical studies. He counters the oft-repeated claim that interpretation of the Bible in the liberal, academic tradition is scientific, as he accuses academics of anti-Christian bias.

Bringing their disbelief in Christ's Resurrection - and ultimately their disbelief in God - into their studies, they start with the falsely sophisticated premise that the evangelists are not really writing what they claim to be writing.

When Luke declares that he has written a precise historical account, and has verified all the data, modern interpreters look beyond those simple words, and look for "layers of meaning". Geis doesn't believe such hidden meanings exist.

Taking Occam's razor to these exegetes' self-important, agnostic theories, he asserts that the evangelists meant to write what they did indeed put on papyrus. They believed that the events they were recording were real events, not allegories pointing to deeper truths. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not Gnostics hiding the truth in code understandable to a select few, but were writing down the truth for all to see.

Geis uses reason, but more than that he uses a farmer-like common sense, which is often lacking in the academic world. He dismisses the commonly held view in the scholarly community that the gospels were written decades after the Crucifixion, and were built on an oral tradition.

The whole oral transmission theory, like all these theories, is for Geis merely one more way to refute the Resurrection, since the underlying assumption about an oral tradition is that people got a lot of things wrong and that the gospels (so the argument goes) are built on bad evidence.

Geis nixes the oral tradition idea because first-century Palestine, contained a highly literate society, where things would have been written down, especially about someone so important and shocking as Jesus. His words and deeds would have been noted in Aramaic, Hebrew or Greek as they were happening.

Geis goes on to attack the thesis that the gospels were written at a later point, shooting holes in the theory that Jesus's prediction of the fall of the Jewish Temple proves the gospels were written after the Temple's destruction in 70 AD.

Such interpretors have committed the mistake of taking their assumptions about Jesus (namely, that he didn't rise from the dead and that the gospels are therefore not true accounts) into their readings of the gospels. These interpreters assume that Jesus couldn't have made such a successful prediction because - and here's the underlying assumption again - he couldn't make predictions or miracles or rise from the dead and save us.

Geis asks: if the gospels were written after 70 AD, why do all evangelists refer to the Temple in the present tense, as if it were still standing when they were writing their accounts? Would they have been so smart and deceitful to fool everyone, and to do so independently of each other?

And getting back to Luke, the author of Luke-Acts: his historical, geographic, and linguistic references, corroborated by archeology, are so accurate that historians consider his writings to be remarkable historical documents. With such precision, why would Luke then suddenly lie about the Resurrection?

The other gospels are similarly accurate about the setting in which Jesus's life, death, and Resurrection take place. Regarding the lack of clear coherence among the evangelists, Geis shows how this actually proves the veracity of the gospels.

First, he notes that other accounts from history that are taken as reliable are usually much more at odds with each other than the gospels are, so modern historians are hypocritical in demanding perfect coherence from the evangelists.

Second, Geis points out that differences between the gospels often reflect a different focus or point of view. Matthew has Jesus preach the Beatitudes on a mount, whereas Luke has Jesus preach the same on a plain. Geis again invokes Occam's razor, suggesting that the sermon was long and the people were sitting while Jesus was standing and walking around. Jesus obviously walked from a hill down to a plain, and Jesus is remembered at both physical points.

Third, the fact that the gospels, written by four non-corroborating authors, do agree on so many of the essentials, and often only disagree on the chronology of events, reflect the core historical truths. One writer refers to one angel at the empty tomb, and another of two angels. The important things are that the tomb was empty, was witnessed by some of his followers and one or more angels were present.

The evangelists commit other acts that show their documents' truthfulness. First, they show the apostles, including Peter and the Sons of Zebedee, to be greedy, selfish, fearful and arrogant, which doesn't make sense if they were writing a propaganda piece for a new world religion. Second, it is women who first witness the empty tomb. Women in ancient Palestine were not legal witnesses, so why wouldn't the Gospel writers have Peter or James discovering the empty tomb?

Finally, Geis looks at the overwhelming group evidence, not only from the pure numbers cited, where Paul writes of 500 people seeing the risen Jesus. Geis also turns to a more intimate, personal proof: "What adds substance to that account is the marked change in the behaviour of the followers of Christ after the Resurrection is said to have happened. Prior to his Crucifixion they were afraid, concerned, and unable to confront Christ's opponents. Peter denied Him... Yet after the Resurrection Peter... becomes obdurate, affirmative, strong in declaration." A whirlwind examination of faulty arguments, the book's weakness is Geis's inability to convey his thoughts more simply so that they can be understood by everybody. This shouldn't have been a problem because his argument is quite simple, as is his philosophical method. He would have a greater impact if he could reach more people.