Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

abused for their preaching; more than once their leaders had been brought before the
     Sanhedrin to answer charges of blasphemy. They were beaten, whipped, stoned, and crucified,
     yet they would not cease proclaiming the risen Jesus. And it worked! Perhaps the most
     obvious reason not to dismiss the disciples’ resurrection experiences out of hand
     is that, among all the other failed messiahs who came before and after him, Jesus
     alone is still called messiah. It was precisely the fervor with which the followers
     of Jesus believed in his resurrection that transformed this tiny Jewish sect into
     the largest religion in the world.
    Although the first resurrection stories were not written until the mid- to late nineties
     (there is no resurrection appearance in either the
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source materials, compiled in around 50 C.E ., or in the gospel of Mark, written after 70 C.E .), belief in the resurrection seems to have been part of the earliest liturgical
     formula of the nascent Christian community. Paul—the former Pharisee who would become
     the most influential interpreter of Jesus’s message—writes about the resurrection
     in a letter addressed to the Christian community in the Greek city of Corinth, sometime
     around 50 C.E . “For I give over to you the first things which I myself accepted,” Paul writes,
     “that Christ died for the sake of our sins,
according to the scriptures
; that he was buried and that he rose again on the third day,
according to the scriptures
; that he was seen by Cephas [Simon Peter], then by the Twelve. After that, he was
     seen by over five hundred brothers at once, many of whom are still alive, though some
     have died. After that, he was seen by [his brother] James; then by all the apostles.
     And, last of all, he was seen by me as well …” (1 Corinthians 15:3–8).
    Paul may have written those words in 50 C.E. , but he is repeating what is likely a much older formula, one that may be traced
     to the early forties. That means belief in the resurrection of Jesus was among the
     community’s first attestations of faith—earlier than the passion narratives, earlier
     even than the story of the virgin birth.
    Nevertheless, the fact remains that the resurrection is not a historical event. It
     may have had historical ripples, but the event itself falls outside the scope of history
     and into the realm of faith. It is, in fact, the ultimate test of faith for Christians,
     as Paul wrote in that same letter to the Corinthians: “If Christ has not been risen,
     then our preaching is empty and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:17).
    Paul makes a key point. Without the resurrection, the whole edifice of Jesus’s claim
     to the mantle of the messiah comes crashing down. The resurrection solves an insurmountable
     problem, one that would have been impossible for the disciples to ignore: Jesus’s
     crucifixion invalidates his claim to be the messiah and successor to David. According
     to the Law of Moses, Jesus’s crucifixion actually marks him as the accursed of God:
     “Anyone hung on a tree [that is, crucified] is under God’s curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23).
     But if Jesus did not actually die—if his death were merely the prelude to his spiritual
     evolution—then the cross would no longer be a curse or a symbol of failure. It would
     be transformed into a symbol of victory.
    Precisely because the resurrection claim was so preposterous and unique, an entirely
     new edifice needed to be constructed to replace the one that had crumbled in the shadow
     of the cross. The resurrection stories in the gospels were created to do just that:
     to put flesh and bones upon an already accepted creed; to create narrative out of
     established belief; and, most of all, to counter the charges of critics who denied
     the claim, who argued that Jesus’s followers saw nothing more than a ghost or a spirit,
     who thought it was the disciples themselves who stole Jesus’s body to make it appear
     as though he rose again. By the time these stories were written, six decades had passed
     since the crucifixion. In that time, the evangelists had heard just about every conceivable
     objection to the resurrection, and they were able to create narratives to counter
     each and every one of them.
    The disciples saw a ghost? Could a ghost eat fish and bread, as the risen Jesus does
     in Luke 24:42–43?
    Jesus was merely an incorporeal spirit? “Does a spirit have flesh and bones?” the
     risen