(avg. read time: 7–14 mins.)
Earlier this year, the second edition of the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters came out.
I am not particularly interested in advising you on whether or not to get the second edition in the event that you have the first edition. There are too many possible factors in various situations of life to consider in that decision. This is especially so because Pauline scholarship is a world I know of, but it is not where I spend a lot of my time, relatively speaking. Of course, there is one exception to that tendency: the subject of resurrection (see here). As such, what I want to do today is to examine the entries on resurrection in both editions of the dictionary, the first edition one by Larry Joseph Kreitzer and the second edition one by Michael R. Licona.
Fascinatingly, the prefatory notes set them apart right away. Kreitzer says:
Two remarks about the resurrection of Jesus Christ as it is portrayed in the Pauline letters need to be made at the outset. First, it is important to note that Paul never attempts to prove the historicity of the resurrection to any of the congregations to which he addresses his letters (contra Bultmann’s views on 1 Cor 15:3-8). He simply asserts the resurrection as a fact (presumably believed by them) and seeks to draw out its implications for their life and faith. Paul is not concerned with philosophical questions of how subjective faith and objective history interrelate; this is predominantly a post-Enlightenment issue which is driven by positivistic concerns not a part of Paul’s outlook. Modern attempts to argue for the historical verification of the resurrection of Jesus Christ based upon the Pauline materials are therefore misdirected, even though they are generally motivated by the best apologetic concerns …
Second, Paul nowhere describes the actual resurrection of Jesus Christ itself, nor does he seek to provide an account of it simply as a historical event to be put alongside other events of history. The resurrection is historical, yes, but it is also more than historical … What descriptions Paul does offer about the risen Christ are postresurrectional appearances of the Lord which are taken to be illustrative of the event and serve as circumstantial guarantees of its historicity. Thus he begins his longest discussion of the resurrection theme by citing a traditional formula which summarizes the kerygma (1 Cor 15:3-4) and then proceeds to list the witnesses to these postresurrectional appearances of the Lord Jesus (1 Cor 15:6-8). The appeal to pre-Pauline tradition highlights the centrality of the resurrection proclamation from the earliest period of the Christian movement …
Both of these considerations should be kept in mind in all apologetical concerns focusing on the resurrection as the basis of Christian faith. (806)
Anyone with a passing familiarity with Licona’s work can see what a contrast this is. This is not to say that Licona directly disagrees with either of the major statements. But he does not, for that reason, eschew matters of historicity in his analysis like Kreitzer does. Indeed, for better or worse, Licona’s historical work on Jesus’s resurrection has mostly focused on Paul. Their understandings of the implications are starkly different.
Kreitzer’s entry is organized as addressing the origins of a doctrine of resurrection, linking Paul with Pharisaic beliefs about resurrection, surveying the terminology of resurrection, exploring the images of resurrection, articulating the notion of co-crucifixion and co-resurrection with Christ, and outlining some issues of interpretation. The review of the origins of resurrection is not that different from what you will find in most standard sources, but its actual contribution to this specific dictionary is questionable. It would have been more helpful to outline the origins of Paul’s resurrection belief and then link that with his sources. That would at least make this entry less boiler-plate. Of course, even what is similar to that suggestion in this entry is awfully brief, as the section on Pharisaic beliefs about resurrection is a paragraph, and not a particularly illuminating one at that. But to be fair to Kreitzer, this entry highlights one of the typical limitations of dictionary entries in that they tend to need to rely on referring to sources when they are unable to explore subjects in more depth, and he may simply not have known enough good sources to direct the reader to on these matters.
As noted from the start, Licona’s entry is not an update of Kreitzer’s, but it is a different kind of project altogether. He organizes his analysis by beginning with a paragraph on Paul as an eyewitness of the resurrected Jesus, followed by a consideration of why his view of resurrection is important, then providing the most extensive section on some of the more controversial resurrection texts in Paul, briefly examining Paul’s conversion experience as recorded in Acts, supplying the obverse of the third section by directing the reader to texts that clarify how Paul thought about resurrection, illustrating the significance of Paul for articulating the apostles’ belief about Jesus’s resurrection, and finally arguing for Paul’s value for answering the historical question: “Did Jesus rise from the dead?” In some ways, this structure works better for the purposes of this dictionary and gets away from some of the unnecessary detours and preoccupations of older scholarship. The first section is a better starting point compared to Kreitzer’s, and the brief second section on why Paul’s view matters is necessary ground to cover for this dictionary entry. I also think it is more cohesive and has a better flow of thought as one section tends to lead into another better than in Kreitzer’s entry. However, as this review goes along, I will point to some areas where I think this entry could have been improved.
Kreitzer’s third section on the terminology of resurrection is … okay. It could have used being more systematic in the treatment of the terms, though I am certainly not expecting it to be like my own grammatical review. That would be too much for an entry like this. But for a dictionary, it would have helped if Kreitzer could have clarified two things that I have also tried to do in the linked post and elsewhere: 1) define what precisely he means by “resurrection” in the first place (he never does); 2) outline how he can tell if a term is used with the sense of resurrection, particularly since the common terms in the NT are not only reserved for resurrection. If he had taken these steps, he either could have avoided over-expanding this section, or he could have at least made his reasoning for the over-expansion clearer. I say he over-expands it because he includes verbs that have nothing apparent to do with resurrection. Namely, he conflates terms for exaltation (συνδοξάζω in Rom 8:17) or ascension (ἀναβαίνω and ἀναλαμβάνω in Eph 4:8, 10; 1 Tim 3:16) with resurrection, even though the primary terms for resurrection are not used for exaltation or ascension, meaning that the apparent thinness of the category distinction is a later distortion of the texts, rather than a feature of the NT. He also tries to appeal to Rom 1:4; 8:34; Phil 2:9; and 1 Thess 1:10 to support his point here, but they do no such thing as to allow for such a conflation.
Unfortunately, Licona also does not provide a direct definition of the term, either. About the closest he gets is in comments like the following describing the Gospels as presenting “Jesus’ resurrection in a manner indicating that his physical body was raised and transformed” (902). But for what should be a dictionary entry, the lack of a direct definition does detract from the quality of his analysis. Likewise, there is no equivalent to a review of vocabulary in Licona’s entry. This is another weakness for a dictionary entry, and for what one should expect it to be. He has an extensive analysis of the adjectives describing the bodies in 1 Cor 15:44–45 (904–5), which I have also addressed here. This is taken from his published dissertation presenting his historiographical approach to the resurrection of Jesus, and it is one of the best analyses I have read of the terms often translated in obscuring fashion as “physical” and “spiritual” bodies. But there is no similar analysis presented for the actual terminology of resurrection in Paul.
What Licona does have in place of Kreitzer’s third section is an overview of Pauline texts considered controversial for establishing how he thought about resurrection. The texts he reviews are Gal 1:11–16; 1 Cor 15:5–8, 42–44, 50 (besides my dissertation and other links in this post, see here); and 2 Cor 5:1–8. While my interpretation of 2 Cor 5 differs slightly from his (in that I do not think Paul is talking about an intermediate state at all), I think he does well in overviewing the issues here and stating the reasons for why these texts are consistent with what he and I (as well as many others) have argued elsewhere. If you have read his big book on the resurrection of Jesus, this is mostly familiar material from him. If you have not read it, it is a nice sampler of the same concerning these controversial texts. The same applies to his short section on the story of Paul in Acts, although here he makes an error in attributing a quote from Acts 2:29–32 to Paul instead of Peter (since he earlier says Acts 2:27–32 is something Paul said). Some wires were crossed here, given the various connections between Acts 2 and 13 (as I have noted at multiple junctures), particularly in their common use of Ps 16. Of course, his point in making reference to the text, of how Paul understood Jesus’s corpse to be involved in his resurrection, would still stand if he had cited the correct text.
Throughout Kreitzer’s entry, he gives the general impression that he takes seriously the bodily nature of literal resurrection, but he is still prone to common scholarly mistakes, such as treating certain miracles like they are in need of an entirely different term to apply to them (“resuscitation”) as opposed to “resurrection” (806), and making much of the fact that Paul never refers to the resurrection “of the flesh,” noting that he distinguishes between the flesh and the body (808; while ignoring that Paul does not use the phrase “resurrection of the body” either). I have addressed both of these common problems here. The efforts to maintain such odd distinctions lead him to wrongly say that Paul calls resurrection itself a mystery in 1 Cor 15:51, when he does not.
In Kreitzer’s section on the images of resurrection, he is at his best. Despite the titles of “resurrection as X,” in his actual expositions he maintains careful distinctions, such as not to conflate resurrection with transformation or exaltation, although it is crucially linked with both in Paul’s theological declarations. I personally would have treated “incorruptibility,” “immortality,” and “eternal life” under one heading as different ways of expressing the same fundamental point from different angles. But this is essentially what he conveys anyway. In addition to these images, he also notes the connection of resurrection with glorification, conformity to the image of Christ (one of Paul’s most crucial teachings about resurrection), and the redemption of the body. The treatment of the conformity to the image of Christ practically makes the fifth section about co-crucifixion and co-resurrection with Christ too short because of how much overlapping material was taken for the sub-section on the former (810). These could have been combined to make for a better exposition on this crucial expression of union with Christ through union with him in death and resurrection.
Licona’s fifth section is almost akin to Kreitzer’s aforementioned section, but his statements about the resurrection of others are mostly brief. His review of Paul’s texts earlier were ultimately about illuminating how he thought of Jesus’s resurrection, and this is ultimately how this section is built as well. Naturally, I do not agree with what he says about the intermediate state, but even apart from that, it is not clear to me why this is in an entry on resurrection. After all, despite the heading it appears under, the popular interpretations of the relevant texts from Philippians and 2 Corinthians do not “provide clearer insights on how he imagined resurrection.” The texts are simply about resurrection and not an intermediate state. Otherwise, he also makes comments on how Paul connected our resurrection to Jesus’s resurrection and thought of Jesus’s resurrection as a historical event. I have no objection to him saying these things, of course, but I do wish this project had been more wide-ranging with a stronger focus on theology, whereby he could have covered at least some of the same ground as Kreitzer did in his best section. I agree with his clear assertion that Paul regarded Jesus’s resurrection as a historical event, but I wish there had been more on the significance of this event in relation to Trinitarian theology, union with Christ, God’s kingdom/new creation project, and so on.
Finally, Kreitzer’s issues of interpretation concern the Messiahship of Jesus, the empty tomb, and the general resurrection. As he notes, affirmation of Jesus’s resurrection does not necessitate affirmation of his Messiahship and deity. They are intertwined in the NT, but the resurrection in and of itself (i.e., denuded of the context of Jesus’s life) does not convey this without context. He provides an overview of different views about Paul’s lack of reference to the empty tomb. This is something else I have also addressed previously, and I was rather disappointed with Kreitzer’s response to the matter. He says, “The reason that the empty tomb is not explicitly discussed in Paul should not be taken as evidence of its historical unreliability, but of its unimportance as a matter of Christian proclamation” (811). I would think, given how Kreitzer understands resurrection references as describing bodily action, that he could have inferred that explicit discussions of the empty tomb in such contexts would have been unnecessary. To say he was resurrected, by virtues of the semantics of resurrection language, would entail that his tomb was empty. The absence of reference to the empty tomb says absolutely nothing about its “unimportance as a matter of Christian proclamation.” His final paragraph, despite its title being about the “general” resurrection, is taken up more specifically with the question of “universal” resurrection in Paul, and it does not really go anywhere. He references texts where Paul writes of universal judgment, but he fails to connect the dots to how this signifies resurrection for all, since resurrection is necessary for final judgment.
As for Licona’s last two proper sections before his summary, this material will once again be familiar to those familiar with his work on the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection. I think he does well to briefly illustrate how Paul provides a link to the broader apostolic belief about Jesus’s resurrection, drawing as he does also on the testimony of Clement and Polycarp in how they, being disciples of the apostles, affirmed that he proclaimed the same gospel. In fact, that is Paul’s whole point in citing a tradition from the Church in its infancy to say that he proclaimed the same gospel in 1 Cor 15:1–7 (besides the relevant portion of my dissertation, see here). Likewise, his section on the value of Paul for the question of if Jesus rose from the dead is an extremely condensed form of the work he has done in his book and elsewhere of arguing against alternative hypotheses explaining facts about Paul and his proclamation of Jesus’s resurrection after once being a persecutor of Jesus’s followers.
Overall, in case it was not obvious, I think Licona wrote the better entry, but his work would have been improved in the scope of its insight if he had added more elements of what Kreitzer had in his entry. Kreitzer’s work falls victim to some widespread bad habits in scholars’ writings on resurrection, which leads to some sloppiness and even incoherence, but I appreciate his theological focus. If one is looking for a condensed presentation of Licona’s historical argumentation, albeit minus the methodological structure, this is definitely a good place to look. At the same time, I wish his work could have given more focus to the meaning of resurrection, even in cursory form, both in outlining as well as defining terms and in exploring what it means in theological-ethical context in Paul’s work.