First-Century Jewish Sources On Jesus In Justin Martyr

Some of my posts in recent months have been discussing Tom Schmidt's new book on Josephus and Jesus. What Schmidt addresses in that book should be supplemented by what Justin Martyr tells us about early Jewish reactions to Christianity, such as Jewish corroboration of the empty tomb. As I discussed in a post several years ago, Justin cites what seems to be a first-century Jewish source (commenting on other first-century Jewish sources). What Justin tells us there and elsewhere corroborates much of what Schmidt argues in his book.

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.

The Empty Tomb And Affirmation Of It Didn't Occur In An Apathetic Context

I've sometimes come across people who argue that the early corroboration of the empty tomb by non-Christian sources doesn't have much significance, since they may have corroborated it out of apathy. They uncritically accepted what Christians told them.

One of the problems with that sort of explanation is that the context surrounding Jesus' placement in the tomb isn't one of apathetic opposition to Christianity. How did Jesus' body get in the tomb to begin with? You don't arrange to get somebody crucified, then carry out the crucifixion, then proceed with the sort of persecution of Christians that we see reflected in Paul's life (his initial life as a persecutor and the persecution he experienced later as a Christian) if you're apathetic about that crucified individual and his followers. Apathy doesn't sit well with the crucifixion or other aspects of early Christian history. One way to summarize this point in your thinking is to consider the empty tomb as in the middle of a chronological spectrum. Just before it, you have the crucifixion. Just after it, you have the early persecution of Christians, as illustrated in the life of Saul of Tarsus. It doesn't make much sense to think there was apathy in the middle of the spectrum, surrounded by so much non-apathy on both sides.

Furthermore, it's not as though affirmation of the empty tomb would be the only option for people who were apathetic, lazy, or some such thing. You could just be agnostic (e.g., Matthew 21:27, John 9:29).

The best explanation for why the empty tomb was affirmed by both the early Christians and their early opponents (both Jewish and Gentile opponents, as my article linked above argues) is that the tomb was empty.

The Church Of The Holy Sepulchre As The Site Of Jesus' Burial

Here's a good article by Caleb Jackson on the subject. The blog the article appears on, Think Christian Theism, has a lot of other good posts as well. It's worth following.

The Historicity Of Jesus' Burial And Empty Tomb

Mike Winger recently posted a video that makes some good points about the historicity of the account of Jesus' burial in Mark's gospel.

Though the empty tomb is a different issue than the burial of Jesus, some of the information we have about the former has implications for the latter. Regarding the evidence outside the gospels and Acts, see here. On the letters of Peter in particular, see here. And here's something I wrote on Justin Martyr a few years ago, including his citation of a first-century Jewish source acknowledging the empty tomb. In another post, I discussed some of the cumulative effects of the evidence.

Neglected Evidence For The Empty Tomb

Disputes over the historicity of the empty tomb usually focus on the gospel accounts. But there's a lot of evidence outside the gospels that should get more attention.

Notice the number and variety of contexts in which Christians were interested in Jesus' burial long before the gospels were written: prophecy (Isaiah 53:9), creeds (1 Corinthians 15:4), theology (1 Corinthians 15:36), ceremonies (Romans 6:4), tracking the location (the tradition behind the Holy Sepulchre site). And notice that these contexts involve more than the mere fact that Jesus was buried. If the empty tomb tradition that's so widely attested from the time of the gospels onward isn't the same tradition that was of such early and widespread interest to Christians before the writing of the gospels, then where is that earlier tradition? Did it universally disappear and get universally replaced by what we see in the gospels? Continuity is more likely than discontinuity. For more about these pre-gospel sources, see here.

The letters of Peter also contain some material that tends to be neglected in this context. See here regarding those letters.

Justin Martyr provides some evidence that's typically not discussed. He not only refers to Jewish corroboration of the empty tomb, as Matthew's gospel does, but also cites a first-century Jewish source in the process. And he refers to how the empty tomb was corroborated not only by the earliest Jewish opponents of Christianity, but also by pagans. For a discussion of all of this material in Justin, see here.

Jesus' Burial And Empty Tomb Outside The Gospels And Acts

It's often suggested that Paul and other early Christians were unaware of, or even contradicted, much of what's said about Jesus in the gospels and Acts. Critics often object to the empty tomb accounts, for example, on the basis that Paul and other New Testament authors don't mention the empty tomb. What I want to do in this post is outline some of the evidence that what the gospels and Acts say about issues related to Jesus' tomb is corroborated elsewhere.

- Belief in a physical resurrection of the body that died implies an empty tomb and interest in it. We've written a lot over the years about the evidence that the early Christians held that view of Jesus' resurrection. See here, here, and here regarding Paul, for example.

- We have a lot of evidence that the earliest Christians and their earliest opponents had the ability and desire to research Jesus' tomb. For example:

More Evidence Of Non-Christian Corroboration Of The Empty Tomb

Section 108 of Justin Martyr's Dialogue With Trypho is one of the most significant passages in the patristic literature in the context of apologetics, but it doesn't get much attention. I've discussed the passage in other posts over the years, and you can read the post I just linked to get the background to this one. What I'll be doing here is expanding upon what I said earlier. The focus of this post will be on reading section 108 of Justin's Dialogue in light of what he says in section 17.

I've consulted several English translations of the Dialogue, including:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.i.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=YCRLAQAAMAAJ
Michael Slusser, ed., Dialogue With Trypho (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2003)

What I'll be discussing below is consistent with all three of those translations. I'm not just getting these conclusions from one translation of the text.

In the relevant portion of section 108, Justin prefaces some of his remarks with "as I said before". What is he referring to? Probably his comments in section 17. Here are the two sections, with some quotation marks added to section 108 for a reason I'll explain later:

Easter Resources 2018

This is my annual collection of resources for the Easter season. Here are the previous years' posts:

2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017

Here are some representative examples of the issues we've addressed:

How To Make A Case For The Resurrection
Independent, Converging Lines Of Evidence For Jesus' Resurrection
Resurrection Evidence Outside The New Testament
Easter Prophecy Fulfillment
Fifty Agreements Among The Resurrection Accounts
The Consistencies Among The Resurrection Accounts In 1 Corinthians 15, The Gospels, And Acts
The Restrained Nature Of The Resurrection Accounts
Evidence For The Shroud Of Turin
The 1982 Carbon Dating Of The Shroud Of Turin
The Context In Which The Gospels Were Composed
How Early The Synoptics Were Written
The Authorship Of Matthew
The Authorship Of Mark
The Authorship Of Luke And Acts
The Authorship Of John
The Authorship Of The Pauline Letters (see the comments section)
The Historicity Of Acts
Evidence For The Empty Tomb
Why It's Significant That The Earliest Sources Don't Narrate The Resurrection Appearance To James
Evidence That Saul Of Tarsus Saw Jesus Risen From The Dead
The Spiritual Body Of 1 Corinthians 15
Why Didn't The Risen Jesus Appear To More And Different People?
Why Doesn't Jesus Appear To Everybody?
Matthew 27:52-53
How The Apostles Died
Miracles In The Modern World
Reviews Of Debates On Jesus' Resurrection

On the sidebar on the right side of the screen, you can access some e-books we've written that address issues relevant to Easter.

After the 2017 Easter resources post linked above, Steve Hays wrote about 1 Corinthians 15:14 and the question of whether we would believe in Christianity or the resurrection if the evidence suggested that it's false. He also responded to Larry Shapiro on a couple of issues related to the resurrection. Steve interacted with Shapiro's response to Mike Licona concerning how Shapiro would react to a modern resurrection. Steve also replied to Shapiro's argument against the resurrection based on the rarity of miracles. Patrick Chan quoted some comments from Craig Blomberg and Ben Witherington on the genre of the gospels. I wrote a list of fifty examples of agreements among the New Testament resurrection accounts. Later, I wrote about how the resurrection appearances mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15 dovetail with what we find in the gospels and Acts. Steve responded to a tendency of some apologists to be overly focused on the resurrection. I addressed the restrained nature of the resurrection accounts. And Steve wrote about the spiritual body Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15. He also addressed how a popular liberal interpretation of the passage has implications those liberals don't want. I posted a collection of resources on prophecy fulfillment related to the Easter season. And Steve linked an article by Craig Evans on how studying history helps us understand Easter. Steve and Patrick linked some videos of Easter music: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Steve provided an overview of how he'd make a case for Jesus' resurrection. He also wrote about the nature of the resurrection body, in response to Dale Allison. And here's something he wrote about passages in the resurrection narratives that are sometimes taken as Jesus materializing or dematerializing. He also addressed the relationship between the soul and the body and the significance of the resurrection in that context. He later wrote about the relationship between information and the resurrection body. I wrote about the evidence that 1 Timothy 5:18 cites Luke's gospel as scripture and the significance of that fact for Easter issues. Steve wrote about the number of angels at Jesus' tomb and the possibility of the use of idiomatic expressions.. He also wrote about evidence for the deity of Isaiah's Suffering Servant. Another post by Steve discusses whether prophecy fulfillment, like Jesus' fulfillment of the Suffering Servant passage, could be staged. I linked an article that discusses some evidence for the deity of Isaiah's Servant figure and the connections between the Servant passages and others in Isaiah. Steve and I addressed the objection that Jesus should make an appearance to every individual or every Christian, much as he made an appearance to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. Here's Steve's response. And here's mine. Steve wrote about the issues involved in harmonizing the resurrection accounts, using the analogy of four people reporting on what happened during a high school reunion. He also wrote a response to Bart Ehrman, part of which addresses resurrection issues. And a later post responding to Richard Carrier is partly about the resurrection.

Easter Resources 2017

Each year, I post a collection of Easter resources. Here are the previous years' posts:

2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016

And here are some representative examples of the issues we've addressed:

Independent, Converging Lines Of Evidence For Jesus' Resurrection
Resurrection Evidence Outside The New Testament
Evidence For The Shroud Of Turin
The 1982 Carbon Dating Of The Shroud Of Turin
The Authorship Of Matthew
The Authorship Of Mark
The Authorship Of Luke And Acts
The Authorship Of John
The Authorship Of The Pauline Letters (see the comments section)
Evidence For The Empty Tomb
Why It's Significant That The Earliest Sources Don't Narrate The Resurrection Appearance To James
Evidence That Saul Of Tarsus Saw Jesus Risen From The Dead
The Spiritual Body Of 1 Corinthians 15
Why Didn't The Risen Jesus Appear To More And Different People?
Matthew 27:52-3
How The Apostles Died
Miracles In The Modern World
Reviews Of Debates On Jesus' Resurrection

We've written some e-books, which are linked on the sidebar on the right side of the screen, and they address some Easter issues.

After the 2016 post on Easter resources linked above, Steve Hays wrote some responses to Bart Ehrman, here, here, and here, which address the resurrection and other topics. And here and here are some posts Steve wrote in response to Ehrman concerning the harmonization of the crucifixion accounts. Steve also addressed how skeptics miscalculate the probability of the resurrection. And here's a response he wrote to Richard Carrier on the argument that the resurrection witnesses wouldn't have died for a lie. A lot of issues came up in the thread, including whether the resurrection witnesses died for a noble lie and whether they had an opportunity to recant before being executed. I put together a collection of links to our material on Matthew's authorship of the first gospel. Steve wrote about the hypothesis that Jesus had a twin brother who was mistakenly thought to be Jesus risen from the dead. And here's another post he wrote on the subject. He also discussed whether the resurrection is extraordinary in the way critics often suggest. And he wrote about whether the resurrection and other miracles are antecedently improbable. I linked a post I wrote on Facebook about how the Suffering Servant prophecy is evidence for Christianity. Steve wrote about animals and the afterlife. And here's something I wrote about Jesus' fulfillment of Psalm 22. I also reviewed a debate between Sean McDowell and Ken Humphreys on the martyrdom of the apostles. Steve wrote about Psalm 16:10 and Jesus' resurrection. He later wrote about how John Goldingay became more appreciative of the resurrection of the body through watching the suffering of his wife. Steve also addressed the implications Gordon Clark's views have for the resurrection. And he linked an article on the relationship between the historicity of Adam and the historicity of Jesus' resurrection. He also linked an article by Edwin Yamauchi about whether the early Christians' belief in Jesus' resurrection was rooted in myth, hallucination, or history. And he discussed what Paul says about the afterlife in 1 Thessalonians 4 and how a Christian view of the afterlife contrasts with non-Christian views. In another post, he addressed the claim that any naturalistic explanation for the evidence pertaining to Jesus' resurrection is preferable to a supernatural explanation. And here's a post Steve wrote about skeptical attempts to dismiss the resurrection appearances as hallucinations and their appeal to Marian apparitions. He also discussed Andy Stanley's views on Jesus' resurrection and the Bible. After that, he addressed objections to a Christian view of the final state. Here's something he wrote in response to Dale Allison on the continuity between the body that dies and the one that rises. He also replied to George Mavrodes on the probability of Jesus' resurrection. In another post, he discussed how Biblical descriptions of the afterlife could be reconciled with incorporeal existence. He also responded to some misgivings Peter Enns expressed about the resurrection of Christ. And he addressed some of the principles involved in judging the consistency of the resurrection accounts. I wrote a series of posts on how the gospels compare to other ancient biographies. Steve wrote about Muhammad's alleged splitting of the moon and how it compares to Christian miracles, such as the darkness at the crucifixion. He also wrote about how God relates to us in the events commemorated at Eastertime. I wrote about how the fulfillment of Isaiah's Suffering Servant passage and other Old Testament prophecies provides modern evidence for Jesus' deity. I also updated my post on the 1982 carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Steve reviewed a debate on the resurrection between Mike Licona and Matt Dillahunty here and here. He also contrasted Biblical miracles, like the resurrection of Christ, to miracles of a less purposeful nature.

How And Why Non-Christians Corroborated The Empty Tomb

One of the best arguments for the empty tomb is its corroboration by non-Christian sources (e.g., Matthew 28:11-5). Critics often try to get around that line of evidence by arguing that the corroboration was fabricated by Christians or that the corroboration was too late, apathetic, uninformed, or faulty in some other way. Maybe only some Jewish opponents of Christianity corroborated the empty tomb, whereas most didn't. Or maybe those who corroborated it were so apathetic about Christianity that they didn't put much effort into researching what they were corroborating. And so on. What I want to do in this post is look at three early sources on non-Christian corroboration of the empty tomb and see what those sources suggest about the nature of that corroboration. The sources are Matthew 28:11-5, section 108 of Justin Martyr's Dialogue With Trypho, and section 30 of Tertullian's The Shows (De Spectaculis).

Hallucinations

One stock objection to the Resurrection appearances is the claim that these were hallucinatory. Mass hallucinations. 

One observation I'd like to make is that we live in a day and age when many people have experienced hallucinations by taking psychedelic drugs. Even when you're hallucinating, it's possible to know that you're hallucinating. You keep telling yourself that this doesn't make sense. It can't be real. In that respect it's like a lucid dream. So even when you're hallucinating, you can retain enough objectivity to realize this isn't for real.

And after you sober up, you can compare your hallucinatory state of mind with your normal state of mind. The things you saw and heard in your hallucination don't exist. 

So the hallucinatory theory fails to explain the Resurrection appearances. People who experience hallucinations can still distinguish between appearance and reality, even during their altered state of consciousness, not to mention after the fact. 

Atheists, Arminians, and the empty tomb

In dealing with the NT Resurrection accounts, atheists take the position that a genuine resurrection is out of the question. That's not open for consideration. Therefore, any explanation is preferable to that. The swoon theory. The disciples went to the wrong address. The body was stolen. Jesus had a twin brother. Jesus was a space alien. 

Now for a striking parallel. Arminians take the position that Calvinism is out of the question. That's not open for consideration. Therefore, any explanation is preferable to that.

Open theism is preferable. Repudiating inerrancy is preferable. Positing that God has middle knowledge of what nonexistent persons, many of whom will never exist, would do. Somehow, these nonentities have a shadowy independence in relation to which God intuits the nonexistent choices of nonexistent agents. 

Stipulating simple foreknowledge despite the admitted contradiction between foreknowledge and libertarian freedom.

In fact, many Arminians have made it abundantly clear that if the alternatives boiled down to Calvinism or atheism, they'd opt for atheism. The Calvinist God is "unworthy of their worship." A "moral monster." Atheism is their ultimate fallback position. Kinda like shooting yourself in the head before the police nab you.  

Both Arminians and atheist will grasp at any explanation whatsoever to evade the remaining explanation, even if it happens to be right.  

Early Non-Christian Sources On The Empty Tomb

It's sometimes noted that a few early Christian sources tell us that Jewish opponents of Christianity acknowledged that Jesus' tomb was found empty shortly after the body had been placed there. It seems unlikely that all of these Christian sources would have been mistaken or lying. That's true as far as it goes, but much more could be said about what those Christian sources report. There are other reasons, which aren't often mentioned, for trusting the sources in question. It's very likely that the empty tomb was acknowledged by the Jewish opponents of Christianity, widely and persistently, for the first few generations of church history. Here's an article I wrote a few years ago on the subject.