Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§18.4 Et Resurrexit
pearance and to be an apostle was accepted by the leadership of the Jerusalem
church, with whatever misgivings. 175
Beyond that the origins of the tradition become much harder to discern.
Particularly problematic is the question of locale. An appearance to women at or
near the tomb has similar tradition-historical plausibility as the account of the
discovery that the tomb was empty. But appearances to the eleven on Easter day
run counter to the indication that they would see Jesus (first) in Galilee (Mark
16.7). The latter emphasis is confirmed by Matthew, a theological motivation is
detectable in Luke's restriction of the appearances to Jerusalem, and the Fourth
Gospel bears testimony to both traditions and suggests some attempt to rationalise
the diversity (the appearance in John 21 as 'the third time' — 21.14). On this
point, unfortunately, Paul gives us no assistance.
It is possible to envisage some sort of historical sequencing and coherence.
For example, a women's tradition (empty tomb, appearance) emerged in Jerusalem,
finding some confirmation in appearances claimed by male disciples who
had remained in the Jerusalem area. It was met in further confirmation by reports
of appearances to other disciples (the main body of the eleven) who had returned
(despondently) to Galilee. 176 These traditions came together in the Jerusalem
church and were given the more (but by no means completely) integrated and coherent
shape which they have retained to this day.
If there is anything in this, then several important features should be highlighted.
(1) Any merging of divergent traditions has been carried through only to
a certain extent. The confusion regarding location and who was first is not removed
in Matthew, in the Fourth Gospel or in the Markan longer ending. Only
Luke has been bold enough to impose a pattern on his material by excluding all
reference to Galilean appearances. (2) A core — empty tomb, third day, seeings,
and commissionings — remains consistent, despite and through all the diversity.
Here too, evidently, so long as the key point was being made through the various
performances, the degree of divergence was not regarded as serious. (3) These
key elements (core) probably go back to the (several) beginnings of the
traditioning process. As consistently in the Jesus tradition, it was the impact
made by discovery that the burial place of Jesus was empty, and by different experiences
of seeing and hearing Jesus, which was embodied from the first telling
175. Gal. 1.18-2.10; 1 Cor. 9.1-2; 15.8-11. See further below, vol. 2.
176. The regular assumption that the disciples (all) fled to Galilee when Jesus was arrested
(as in Gnilka, Jesus 293; Funk, Honest 223) lacks historical discrimination. As Wedderburn
notes, it is equally as difficult to dispense critically with either one of the two sets (Jerusalem,
Galilee) of traditions (Beyond Resurrection 55-57, 59-60). There are several reasons that
those who saw Jesus in Galilee might then have returned to Jerusalem — e.g., to await Jesus'
expected soon return (Sanders, Historical Figure 276: 'They did not give up his idea that the
kingdom would come'). But fuller discussion is best left till vol. 2.
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