Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE CLIMAX OF JESUS' MISSION §18.1
makes better sense to round off the first volume, on Jesus, with a treatment of
what Christians have always (from the first) believed was the most remarkable
thing about Jesus — his resurrection from the dead. That belief seems to have
been not only fundamental for Christianity as far back as we can trace, but also
presuppositional and foundational. 4 Any claims to disentangle a Jesus movement
or form of Christianity which did not celebrate Jesus' resurrection inevitably
have to assume what they are trying to prove (petitio principii), since all the data
available (including Q) were retained by churches which did celebrate his resurrection.
5 As a historical statement we can say quite firmly: no Christianity without
the resurrection of Jesus. As Jesus is the single great 'presupposition' of
Christianity, so also is the resurrection of Jesus. To stop short of the resurrection
would have been to stop short.
Second, the Gospels themselves obviously regarded the resurrection of Jesus
as the climax of their accounts of the remembered Jesus. The story of Jesus
would be incomplete without including the story of his resurrection. 6 Even Mark,
who records no appearance of Jesus, clearly affirms the resurrection and points
forward to such appearances (Mark 16.6-7). 7 We should respect that perspective
and be prepared to investigate what that conviction was based on. 8 Of course the
4. 'God raised him from the dead' is probably the earliest distinctively Christian affirmation
and confession. It is presupposed again and again in the earliest Christian writings (Rom.
4.24-25; 7.4; 8.11; 1 Cor. 6.14; 15.4, 12, 20; 2 Cor. 4.14; Gal. 1.1; Col. 2.12; 1 Thes. 1.10; Eph.
1.20; 2 Tim. 2.8; Heb. 13.20; 1 Pet. 1.21; Acts 3.15; 4.10; 5.30; 10.40; 13.30, 37). It was the
faith to which Paul was converted, probably within two to three years of Jesus' death (1 Cor.
15.3-8).
5. On Q see above, §7.4. J. S. Kloppenborg does not dispute the influence of 'Easter
faith' on Q (' "Easter Faith" and the Sayings Gospel Q', in R. Cameron, ed., The Apocryphal Jesus
and Christian Origins, Semeia 49 [1990] 71-99 [here 83]; for Q 'Jesus arose in his words'
[92]), but still assumes, without sufficient warrant, that had the Easter 'events' been significant
for the Q community/ies they would have been included within Q's 'narrative world'. But we
will have to revisit the whole question in vol. 2.
6.1 use the last phrase 'the story of his resurrection' loosely. The story is of empty tomb
and sightings of Jesus after his death; the nearest we have to a description of 'the resurrection'
itself is the manifestly imaginative Gos. Pet. 10.39-42. So care has to be taken lest language
used predispose the quester towards a particular reading of the data. We shall return to this issue
in §18.5.
7. There is a very broad consensus that Mark's Gospel ended at 16.8 (textual data and
evaluation in Metzger, Textual Commentary 122-26); the longer ending (16.9-20) shows knowledge
of Luke 8.2; Luke 24.10/John 20.11-18; Luke 24.13-39 and episodes from Acts; it was
probably added to Mark 16 to round off the Gospel more satisfactorily in the second century.
On the possibility of a book ending with the conjunction gar ('for') see P. van der Horst, 'Can a
Book End with gar? A Note on Mark xvi.8', JTS 23 (1972) 121-24.
8. By the same logic we might have included discussion of Jesus' 'ascension' (Luke
24.51). But it is unclear how the concept 'ascension' relates to the concept 'resurrection' (cf.
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