Jesus' Use Of Mountains In The Easter Context

I've written before about agreements among the gospels concerning some language Jesus used in the Easter context. In a post last year, I wrote about agreement among the gospels and Acts regarding Jesus' use of mountains. Something I didn't note in that post is that a couple of those passages are in the context of resurrection appearances. And they're in different documents written by different authors (Matthew 28:16, Acts 1:12). Something else they have in common is that both mountain settings seem to be ones Jesus chose ahead of time for some highly significant purpose (the Great Commission, the ascension) rather than just being a setting he chose for some lesser purpose (e.g., as a place to rest). So, these two resurrection accounts agree about that sort of behavior by Jesus, and similar behavior is seen in many non-resurrection contexts in all four of the gospels. Those characteristics add credibility to the accounts.

The Diversity Of The Empty Tomb Sources

I've argued elsewhere that the empty tomb was affirmed not just by the early Christians, but also by both their early Jewish opponents and their early Gentile opponents. In the post just linked, I argue for Justin Martyr's citation of a first-century Jewish source corroborating the empty tomb, and I discuss some other significant material in Justin. I've also written, here, about the tenacity of the Jewish corroboration, so that it persisted well beyond the time of the apostles and adapted to ongoing circumstances. The original Jewish explanation of the empty tomb, that Jesus' disciples stole the body, made far more sense early on than it did later. So, though some Jews continued to use the explanation that the disciples stole the body, others developed another argument, that a gardener took the body.

Not only are these large groups affirming the empty tomb diverse (Christians, non-Christian Jews, pagans), but there had to be a diversity of individuals within each of these groups. Paul was a former Pharisee and persecutor of Christians, and he would have had a substantial amount of knowledge of what non-Christian Jews knew about and were saying about the empty tomb. James would have had the knowledge of a family member who had close connections to other relatives of Jesus. If Jesus had received some other sort of burial than what the early Christians reported, such as being placed in some kind of family tomb, James would have been in a good position to know it. The Jewish leaders who had spent years working against Jesus and had arranged to have him crucified surely would have monitored what was going on and would have formulated a response to ongoing circumstances. Or think of Pilate's involvement in the events surrounding Jesus' death, including the entombing of the body and what happened immediately thereafter. Pilate not only had an opportunity to shape both Jewish and Gentile non-Christian views on these subjects, but also may have kept a relevant written record of some kind.

Even if one or more sources like the ones just mentioned were apathetic, careless, or some such thing, it's unlikely that all of them were and that they all erred in the same direction. The best explanation for such widespread affirmation of the empty tomb is that the tomb was empty.

Why only one appearance to Paul?

I mentioned the resurrection appearance to Paul in my last post, citing 1 Corinthians 15:8. It's noteworthy that Paul only refers to one appearance and calls it "last of all". That's harmonious with what Luke reports in Acts. The appearance to Paul is narrated three times in Acts, but it's limited to one appearance. By contrast, there were a few appearances to Peter mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15, and some of the other apostles also saw the risen Jesus more than once. We're often told that the apostles were highly disunified, that their followers competed with one another, etc. So, why did neither Paul nor Luke claim more than one appearance to Paul? As N.T. Wright commented in another context, concerning James:

"In particular, if it is true that stories of people meeting Jesus were invented in order to legitimate leaders in the early church, it is remarkable that we hear nothing, throughout the gospel stories, of James the brother of Jesus….Why does he, too, not run a race against Peter [as in John 20:3-8]? Would that not have been a convenient fiction to clothe early ecclesial power struggles?" (The Resurrection Of The Son Of God [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2003], 610)

The fact that Paul only claimed one appearance also goes against the notion that he was prone to hallucinations, delusional, overly imaginative, etc.