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The Resurrection of Jesus – A New Historiographical Approach

Author:	Michael R Licona
Published By:	Apollos (IVP) (Nottingham)
Pages:	718
Price:	£24.99
ISBN:	978 0 8308 2719 0

Reviewed by Philip Joy.

A substantial offering whose blurb begins “I am not aware of any scholar who has previously offered such a thorough and fair-minded account of the historiographical prolegomena to the resurrection question,” is not likely to be one a busy pastor or any but the most educated layman would be encouraged to read. Too many long words! Over 700 packed pages!

However, the book is actually very readable, split into accessible chunks: and there are such things as study requirements, sabbaticals, masters degrees, long holidays, retirement and, perhaps most important, people who have more searching questions than the average pastor or paperback can begin to answer. If examining the truth of the resurrection is your bent, or someone’s need, then this book is a pretty definitive investment.

Licona argues that today’s biblical scholars are largely ill-equipped as historians to engage with the historicity of the resurrection. They are failing the faith community by not addressing the postmodernists who proclaim the death of history, who deny that we can know anything at all, that objective truth - especially about a subject in which so many writers have a personal stake - lies beyond our ability to attain. He first considers the toolkit of the contemporary historian: the nature of truth, of bias (including his own!), of acceptable levels of proof and the fact that historians regularly deal with degrees of certainty, but that does not necessarily lead them to assume events did not happen. He then provides a thorough review of the source material concerning the resurrection available to historians, from the canonical Gospels to such writings as Pseudo-Mark and the Gospel of Thomas; from the pre-New Testament oral traditions (such as the elusive ‘Q’) to the epistles of Paul; non-Christian sources including more than half a dozen ancient writers in addition to the famous Josephus; and finally the writings of the Apostolic Fathers such as Polycarp. From here he makes some preliminary judgements that would be consistent with good historical method concerning the probable historicity of Jesus’ life, death and subsequent appearances as well as the conversions of Paul and James the brother of Jesus.

He then takes a hundred pages to examine the views of representative prominent sceptics: from the somewhat vague views of “Jesus the Jew” writer Vermes; to those who strenuously deny the historicity of the accounts, proposing the answer lies in individual and communal delusions (Goulder); those who accept the historicity of the accounts, but also resort to psychological explanations (Lüdemann); those who consider the resurrection as a parable whose meaning does not depend upon its historicity, and who reject as ‘unethical’ the Resurrection’s claim to uniqueness (Crossan); to those whose explanations focus on ASC (Altered States of Consciousnes) brought on by a cultural context that no longer applies today (Craffert); and through cross-examination, the extent to which these scholars’ views fulfil those norms of historical enquiry he has previously set out.

Apart from a ‘packed programme’ of well cross-referenced appendices and summaries of chapters, the book proper concludes with a final section weighing the various resurrection hypotheses, the question of insufficient sources, the challenge of legend and the application of Ockham’s Razor to the issues at stake. The final result is, in one reviewers words with whom I concur, a “tour de force that unmasks [the] explanatory inadequacy” of those who claim the bodily resurrection of Jesus did not take place, and sets forth a reasonable case for the adoption of that event as a historical fact. Good, eh?