Review of The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History

(avg. read time: 36–72 mins.)

My third review of a book about resurrection (see here and here for the others) is also the most complicated one. It is Dale Allison’s latest (and last?) work on resurrection:

Allison, Dale C., Jr. The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2021.

The review is complicated because the work and its author are complicated. Allison does not fit comfortably into common pre-established categories of belief, and he certainly writes like it. By his own admission, he operates like someone with multiple personalities (4–5) with sympathies that pull him in multiple directions. Whether you hold to traditional Christian beliefs about Jesus’s resurrection and the sources attesting to it (as I do) or you are inclined to a much more skeptical perspective, you will find much to agree with and much to disagree with. People of both general groups will say that Allison has not gone far enough in either direction. Of course, this would not surprise Allison at all; it is simply a comment on what to expect. At the same time, Allison’s multiple personalities cause some problems for the coherence of this book. We will get into the details of that and other points, both positive and negative, as we go along.

I will say that, regardless of any other of the many comments I make, I would recommend this book as a reference resource. Allison has done his research for a long time and that is apparent from the copious footnotes. And it is a good variety of sources from different languages, fields, and times. It is great to consult to fill out a bibliography on various subjects related to resurrection. Unfortunately, his own work does not have a bibliography. There is an index of author references, but that does not cut it. I am not sure why this work is lacking a proper bibliography, but I simply cannot see how this was the right decision for such a well-researched book.

With that aside, one should understand from the start where Allison is, as set out in the first chapter. Various arguments he makes will be useful to both apologetically-minded believers and skeptics, but in his words:

The present volume, which is an exercise in the limits of historical criticism, has a less assertive, more humble agenda. This is not because I am, in my religious sympathies, equidistant from the two entrenched camps—I believe that the disciples saw Jesus and that he saw them, and next Easter will find me in church—but because I am persuaded that neither side can do what it claims to have done. (3)

Likewise, one should understand the nature of his work, for Allison sees it as more of a ground-clearing exercise (4) and as incomplete for this reason and others:

This book is not, I should add, a theological treatise. Those looking for religious bread will find here only a historical-critical stone. It has, of course, been unfeasible to leave God and miracles altogether out of account. They put in appearances at several junctures. My goal, however, has been to adopt, before all else, the role of a historian, and to think, as far as possible, about a circumscribed subject within a limited frame of reference. I am, without apology, interested in what really happened….

My self-imposed restraint rather has two sources. The first is the practical need to focus and thereby prevent a potentially protean subject from sprawling far and wide. This has entailed, in most chapters, a one-sided pursuit of history….

Second, and to be personal, life is all-too-brief, and enough is enough. This book is overlong already, and I must draw the line somewhere, even if that is precisely where things get more interesting. The following pages are, in my mind, nothing but a collection of disparate preambles to a much larger work that I shall never write. In other words, I have not finished this book but abandoned it. The upshot is that herein I am chiefly a historian playing on the seashore while the great ocean of religious truth—which is also the ocean of religious untruth—comes into view only now and then. (6–7)

All of this is understandable, though I am curious how Allison considers this book “overlong,” in view of how volumes such as those of N. T. Wright and Michael Licona are around twice as long as this book (365 pages before the indexes). Of course, I say this as someone who thought my 364-page dissertation (not counting bibliography) was too short, even given my restricted scope (and it is certainly much shorter than other dissertations I’ve read).

Chapter 2 is simply a review of the options for explaining the early Christian claims of resurrection and the stories that arose about them. With eight broad categories to cover views alongside the traditional Christian explanation, it is a good overview with hundreds of sources cited across seventy-four footnotes. Indeed, this chapter exemplifies how, even if one does not necessarily agree with Allison on some crucial points, he does well to survey the issues in the primary sources and the works of both Christians and skeptics.

Chapter 3 begins the review of the evidence with the early Christian formulae and confessions as found in the NT. I have not specifically examined some of these texts as “formulae” or “confessions per se,” except 1 Cor 15:3–7 in my dissertation and a forthcoming article. I have also written about the grammar and usage of resurrection terminology in other analyses (the latter of which now has a published form in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 65). On such bases, I can attest that Allison’s work is generally good and insightful here (as is his review of resurrection belief in relation to the empty tomb in Chapter 6). The analysis of the use of the OT is also on-point as a way to illuminate the use of the phrases referring to “three days” in the context of Jesus’s resurrection (28–31), as well as the links of Rom 1:3–4 with 2 Sam 7:12–16 (33–34). Since the latter comes from a text that was probably pre-Pauline to some extent, I think he rightly surmises that the earliest Christians did not form their resurrection belief from such texts, “They rather interpreted and sustained it” (34). I am also inclined to agree that Rom 1:4 does form a connection with the eschatological resurrection (34–36), but that will be something to explore another time in my review of resurrection in Romans.

Still, I must register a couple disagreements. One, as I present the case for in my forthcoming article, I think Allison is wrong in following the majority view on the extent of the pre-Pauline aspects in vv. 3–7 as ending in v. 5 (38–39). For reasons I outline there, particularly in how it comports with the gospel proclamations in Acts, I do not think he is correct in thus linking at least some of the appearances in vv. 6–7 to a time after Jesus’s ascension (82), since I think testimony to these appearances was part of the earliest proclamations. Two, Allison’s portrait of the historical Jesus is notable for being Schweitzerian in that he thinks Jesus taught that the Parousia (the preferred way for scholars to refer to the Second Coming) would happen soon and thus Paul and the other earliest Christians believed and taught that the Parousia and the eschatological resurrection would happen soon within their lifetimes (he says this for the first time on 35, but the point comes up many more times in the book). I have not gone over all the relevant texts on this Substack related to this assertion, but I have argued in posts on the different versions of the Olivet Discourse, as well as my post on 2 Cor 4:13–5:10, that this is not an accurate account of early Christian belief, and too much hinges on the lack of distinguishing between an expectation of what would happen in a given short timeframe from an expectation of what could happen at any time (as well as what I think is a misinterpretation of the Olivet Discourse).

Chapter 4 is a review of the references to appearances. I initially scanned through the chapter to see what all he was reviewing, and I noticed that he included the vision of Stephen in Acts 7 and the vision of John in Rev 1 among these resurrection appearances. He was not the first one I have seen include them, but I was curious to know how he justified their inclusion. After reading the chapter, I am still wondering. There does not seem to be a clear positive reason for why these texts should be presented as exemplifying this phenomenon, as opposed to simply being like other visions of Christ after he was resurrected. He does try to establish parallels with the resurrection appearances and Rev 1, which, despite their number (ten) are not as “substantial” as he claims (90–91). The argument is an attempt to stack disparate elements from disparate stories rather than pointing to key vocabulary or significant structural similarities across multiple stories (without this, his argument is inherently weakened by lacking the narrative connective tissue of the Gospels and Acts). The fact that Jesus shows himself and speaks does not set this event apart as a resurrection appearance. The connection to the Lord’s day (Rev 1:9) is interesting, but, again, not indicative of a resurrection appearance, not least because there are resurrection appearances not connected to the day. Turning back and seeing Jesus is said to be a parallel to John 20:14, but this is, again superficial, as even the vocabulary is different. Falling at Jesus’s feet and being told not to be afraid is supposed to be a significant parallel, even though this is also a feature of angelophanies of the OT (and he stretches to connect this with the women “grabbing” Jesus’s feet in Matt 28:9–10). The two separate connections he makes to Dan 7 and Ezek 1 tell us nothing about how these events belong together as similar types of events. The reflection of the gospel proclamation in Mark 16:6 and Rev 1:18 is certainly interesting, as I have also noted the elements of gospel proclamation in Revelation and elsewhere, but the context is notably different—John did not think prior to this declaration Jesus was still dead like the women in the story from Mark—and thus the force of the message is not the same, as John is reminded of this and is not told it for the first time. The affirmation of John 20:28 is connected to Rev 1:14 and 17, but this really shows how far Allison is stretching to connect these texts, whereas the OT appears to be the more immediate influence on the particular description of Revelation. Finally, he says the departure of Jesus goes unremarked in both Rev 1 and several (but not all) Gospel narratives; in the former case, it is not particularly common to describe exits, as such, in a visionary setting, nor does Jesus depart at the end of ch. 1, as he continues speaking through chs. 2 and 3; in the latter case, I am not sure why the exit would need to be described unless there is some point in the narrative carrying on after that (as in the story with the disciples on the road to Emmaus). Most of these are not even directly related to the matter of resurrection, thus one wonders why Allison even bothered in making this argument, as opposed to sticking with what are listed as resurrection appearances in the Gospels and 1 Cor 15.

Frankly, these two events from Acts and Revelation are included to muddle the category and the potentiality of what “appeared to” could mean. But that does not motivate him to include Acts 9:10–16; 18:9–10; 22:17–21; 23:11; or 2 Cor 12. This lack of inclusion is even more confusing in light of how he further muddles the category later, thus leading to a bit of incoherence in his argument, but we will get to that. Perhaps if he had tried being too expansive here, it would have become obvious that something has broken down somewhere in the argument. Although the NT writers do not have a fully worked out typology of these special experiences and encounters with the Lord (or other cases of heavenly messengers), despite Allison’s own muddling, it does seem that they had a more restricted understanding of what it meant to be the recipient of a resurrection appearance. If we are to think of the category definition in terms of a prototype at a conceptual center with other events being more or less further away from it, while Paul’s experience is close enough to the prototype to satisfy the earliest Christians—which would have been defined among the earliest Christians around the experiences of those like the Twelve—despite its differences, these other experiences, while involving Jesus, are too far away from the prototype to be counted as such.

Additionally, but also unsurprisingly, I think Allison left out of due consideration texts that should have been considered. I am, of course, talking about the short stories from Mark 16:9–20. As should be obvious from what I have written elsewhere, I do not agree with how dismissively Allison treats the arguments for the authenticity of this text (e.g., 47, 50 n. 27, 54 n. 61, 56), even dubbing it as “Pseudo-Mark” throughout. Despite his dismissiveness, one must wonder why the text is not given any focused consideration. He writes of texts that he thinks could have been later apologetic additions to or developments of the earlier stories in Luke and John (such as the story about Thomas), but not this one (though composed of multiple stories) that he also considers a later addition. He only consults non-canonical sources insofar as they intersect with the canonical ones, so it is all the more confusing, if his scope primarily concerns the NT canon, why he did not focus attention on Mark 16:9–20, which is part of the canon whether he thinks it should be there or not.

What about the events that I can agree with Allison should be considered in this category? I think he provides generally good reasons for thinking that there is a historical memory from which came the stories of an appearance to Mary Magdalene (49–52), but I think some of the reasoning is specious. For example, when appealing to a patriarchal prejudice to explain Mary’s absence from 1 Cor 15, he says, “In the words of Carolyn Osiek, Paul’s tradition passes over the empty tomb in silence because it ‘necessitates reliance on the credibility of women, whereas the abundant male experiences of appearances do not… Once the empty tomb is eliminated, it is not difficult to eliminate also the appearances to the women, which are tied to the tomb narratives and setting…’ I am inclined to agree” (50–51). While I do side with many in explaining the absence of the women from 1 Cor 15 being explicable due to outside prejudices against the testimony of women, so that the stories would be recounted to people once they joined the movement (and so they would be included in the Gospels) but would not be put forward as the lead presentation to those outside in the early years (i.e., before the Gospel texts were widely distributed), I do not think this argument makes sense. I have gone over the reasons for why an empty tomb can be properly assumed in this text in my article on expectations and the interpretation of resurrection as “bodily” (linked above). If Jesus was resurrected, his empty tomb would not need to be stated, even though it could be, since it would be generally assumed from how “resurrection” language worked (as Allison himself recognizes in Chapter 6). In fact, the empty tomb is nowhere referenced outside of narratives. It appears nowhere in the gospel summaries of Acts or the rest of the NT. It is not even in the early creeds when it is clear that the stories were widely accepted among those who formulated the creeds. Its absence here appears to have nothing to do with any intention to ignore the stories of women, and according to what we see in Luke and John, it is not as if only women could be called upon to attest to the empty tomb in any case.

On the other hand, Allison’s review of accounts for why we have no story of an appearance to Peter is interesting (54–56). It is a curious absence. We have brief references to the appearances to Peter in Luke and Paul, but there is no proper story of an individual appearance to Peter. Nor is it in Mark, where one might otherwise have expected it if 16:9–20 was written much later and there was an opportunity to add a proper story into the Gospel. The appearance was clearly important, and he is the first in the list of witnesses in 1 Cor 15, which fits with his prominence among the earliest Christians. But in no text do we see the story laid out. It is not clear how this is to be accounted for; it is simply a fact we need to live with.

As he goes through the other witnesses listed in 1 Cor 15, he has an odd introductory note that once again shows his attempt to wedge widely divergent notions of what a resurrection appearance was into the considerations of possibilities: “First Corinthians 15:3-8 is not a list of bare, objective facts but an interpretation of half a dozen experiences. The repeated ὤφθη (‘he appeared’) is somebody’s attempt to give a uniform meaning to a series of events that can hardly have been alike in all particulars” (60). “A uniform meaning to a series of events that can hardly have been alike in all particulars”? What is the point of such a comment but an attempt to apply a wedge to open up possibilities for one’s own theorizing, whether it is actually warranted or not? If I told the story of how I went to the Texas state fair and the regular season football game between the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners in 2018 and I mention that an old friend of mine also went to the fair and the game, does that imply that I am somehow illegitimately attempting to give a uniform meaning to two sets of experiences that can hardly have been alike in all particulars? What person reasonably assumes this? What person would reasonably think that all of these experiences would have been alike in all particulars without Allison saying so? Just like my description of how two people “went to the fair and the football game,” the description does not imply, without further examination, that I am somehow illegitimately or illicitly attempting to make uniform two experiences that would have been different for a number of reasons. But the description “went to the fair and the football game,” implies enough in common about our experience that differentiates us from people who watched the game on TV or did not watch at all without attending the fair.

What makes such a construal even more needlessly confusing is that in the previous chapter Allison registered his agreement with Martin Hengel, Birger Gerhardsson, and others (like me) that these statements in the credo of 1 Cor 15 summarized larger stories:

To hold that shorn assertions, such as ‘Jesus appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve,’ would have satisfied hearers, eliciting no queries calling for stories, is no more credible than insisting that Christians at first said things such as ‘Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil’ (Acts 10:38) and only later relished telling miracle stories about him. Or that while Paul and others preached Christ crucified, no particulars about Jesus’ martyrdom emerged until decades after the fact, when interest unaccountably set in. Or that anyone ever declared that ‘he appeared to Cephas’ without making clear who Cephas was, if the audience knew him not…. Unless something obvious stands in the way, we should posit, on the part of early Christians, simple human curiosity and a desire to communicate rather than obfuscate. (41)

How, then, does the Dale Allison of Chapter 3 cohere with the Dale Allison of Chapter 4 on this point? Surely if this credo was “somebody’s attempt” to cover over relevant differences in the experiences, this attempt would not have survived a line of questioning that Allison expects to have happened.

Likewise, Allison attempts to open up the possibilities with the noted appearance to the Twelve:

A skeptic could, accordingly, appeal to social psychology and plausibly wonder whether all had the same experience. Did all hear Jesus speak the same words? Did all see the same thing? To ask such questions is to realize how little we know. Many treat the appearance to the twelve as though it were an appearance to an individual, as though a group shared a single mental event. Yet how can anyone know this? If, let us say, two or three of the disciples said that they had seen Jesus, maybe those who did not see him but thought they felt his presence would have gone along and been happy to be included in “he appeared to the twelve.” Certainly none were indifferent, impartial spectators cheering for the death of their cause. [Note: that is hardly what would constitute “impartial” in any case.] (63)

Is there any positive reason to think this? No. If one does not presume that what the Twelve saw was a vision of some kind but that it was, as they say, an appearance of one who was resurrected, we would have no more reason to think that the Twelve had a variety of such divergent experiences than we would to think that people saw completely different things happen with the stories of Jairus’s daughter, the widow of Nain’s son, or Lazarus. The way he frames it can only make sense on the presumption of something like a vision, as he never describes events in the passion narrative as people “sharing a single mental event.” Does Allison use similar language in his engagement with other stories of Jesus outside of the resurrection (and maybe the transfiguration) in his historical Jesus work? As far as I recall, in none of these other cases does he posit that not all of the disciples might have heard the same words from Jesus or saw the same thing when they were present at the same event. Otherwise, one might think that he could have used this as an explanation for differences in wording or narration among the Gospels instead of his favored redaction-critical explanations. It is only because he wishes to leave the possibility of a visionary experience open that he frames the matter in this way (he does much the same with the 500+ on 74). One can also see this in his statement, “They could not, furthermore, have been united in their conviction that ‘he appeared to the twelve,’ if united they were, until they had spoken with one another about their experiences; and to imagine that none of them, in the process, influenced the recall or interpretation of others would be naïve in the extreme” (64). Why not? Does Allison regularly say this about weddings, that people could not be united in their belief that the two given individuals got married without speaking to each other about the event? Surely the Twelve did speak to each other about what happened, but on what basis are we supposed to think that they could not have come to the same conclusion without talking about it? We are never given one. Allison simply supposes it is so because he lacks conviction about the nature of the events in question. I do not mean this as an unflattering characterization of Allison; it comes from his conclusion to the chapter: “The reticence of our sources, their dearth of detail, is part of the rationale for my attempt, in Part III, to see if comparative materials might throw some light on our subject” (92). Later chapters will also uphold this characterization.

I could go on further about issues with Allison’s analysis in this chapter than I do, but I will simply wrap up this portion with two more points. One, as with the attempts to parallel Rev 1 and the resurrection appearances earlier, he attempts to argue through some parallels for a claim that is not all that uncommon that Luke 5:1–11 and John 21:1–17 are variations on the same story (69). In fact, I will quote the elements he identifies as indicating that the texts “share much in common” (69) with my comments in brackets:

• Peter, the sons of Zebedee, and others are in a boat near land. [Yes, they are fishermen. But this reference to “a boat” glosses over that Jesus got into the boat with Peter in Luke 5 and there are multiple boats in the story in Luke as opposed to the one in John. The sons of Zebedee may be in the other boat in Luke 5, given vv. 7, 9–10. The description also glosses over that they had come ashore in Luke 5 and Jesus tells them to put out into deep water to catch the fish (5:4), whereas they were only 200 cubits or around 100 yards away from the shore in John 21:8]

• They have caught nothing after fishing all night. [Yes, having such rough stretches was not unheard-of or even unusual for fishermen.]

• Jesus is on the shore. [The superficiality of this connection is easy to see from the fact that Jesus does not stay on the shore in Luke 5 but embarks into one of the boats, which is a rather significant difference for how the story goes compared to John 21.]

• Jesus tells the fishermen to cast out their nets. [Yes, what else would you expect given the situation? That he would tell them to give up for the day?]

• The disciples obey and take in an unexpectedly large catch. [Yes, this is at least part of what made the stories worth telling. And if the story of Luke 5 happened before the time of John 21, that provides a simple explanation for why the Beloved Disciple would then recognize that the one who commanded them was the Lord, despite being so far away from him, as he would have remembered this event.]

• In Luke, the nets begin to break or are about to break (διερρήσσετο δὲ τὰ δίκτυα αὐτῶν) whereas in John the net is not torn (οὐκ ἐσχίσθη τὸ δίκτυον). [Since he states the different vocabulary in the stories for himself, it is odd that he cites this feature as among the things the stories share in common. I guess the “substantial correlation” here is supposed to be the fact that they comment on the nets at all. But why would distinct stories about miraculous catches of fish not comment on the nets to emphasize the amount of fish caught, even if to stress that the nets held strong?]

• Jesus converses with Peter alone. [It would be more accurate to say that Jesus has quoted one-on-one dialogue exchanges with Peter alone, because Jesus teaches a crowd in Luke 5:3 and he speaks to the disciples as a group in John 21:5–6, 10, and 12. Also, although Peter is not the only disciple who speaks here, it must be remembered how frequent it is for Peter to be the only disciple singled out for quotation when the other disciples are referred to collectively. See Matt 14:28, 30; 15:15; 16:16, 22; 17:4, 25, 26; 18:21; 19:27; 26:33, 35, 70, 72, 74; Mark 8:29; 9:5; 10:28; 14:29, 31, 68, 71; Luke 5:5, 8; 8:45; 9:20, 33; 12:41; 18:28; 22:33, 35, 38, 49, 57, 58, 60; John 6:68–69; 13:6, 8, 9, 24, 36, 37; 18:17, 25; 21:3, 15, 16, 17, 21.]

• Luke’s Peter says he is a sinner while John’s text alludes to Peter’s denial of Jesus. [Yes, Peter has problems, as he himself acknowledges. It’s kind of something consistent about his portrayal in every Gospel. And Jesus still loves him. And this is a rather broad parallel, not really a “substantial” correlation.]

• Jesus commissions Peter to catch people (so Luke) or feed Jesus’ sheep (so John). [Again, he acknowledges a difference in the stories, including significantly different metaphors, but I suppose the similarity is that Peter is given a commission in both. But the difference in commissions fits two different situations, as well as two sides of his responsibilities as an evangelist and Church leader.]

• Peter, in both stories, calls Jesus “Lord.” [Yes, he is called this many, many times across the Gospels, including several times by Peter in Matt 14:28, 30; 16:22; 17:4; 18:21; Luke 12:41; John 6:68; 13:6, 9, and 36–37.]

• Peter, in Luke, follows (ἠκολούθησαν) Jesus whereas, in John, Jesus says to him, “Follow me” (ἀκολούθει). (69) [Yes, they both use what is a rather common verb in the Gospels, where it occurs seventy-nine out of ninety times in the NT, including in the calling story in Matthew and Mark. It is also odd that he says “Peter” follows Jesus when the form of the verb in Luke is a third-person plural. Obviously, Peter is included in that plural, but this is again trying to glide over differences.]

On the basis of such a list, Allison says, “Luke 5:1-11 and Jn 21:1-17 must, given these substantial correlations, be variants of the same story” (69). It is a curious feature of Allison’s work that he is reserved about confident conclusions on so many things concerning Jesus’s resurrection because of what he regards as meager data, but when it comes to more minor matters, he has little trouble saying what must be the case. And this is on the basis of a rather weak case of superficial similarities mixed with distorted parallels.

Two, though it is a less significant bit of incoherency between chapters than others we can find in this book, there is another example that comes up, among other issues, in Allison’s analysis of the appearance to the 500+. As he says here:

Perhaps the Corinthians knew more. Commentators and apologists have often remarked that Paul, with his aside that most of the five hundred yet live, implies that they could be interrogated. Yet was this more than a rhetorical possibility? Whereas the apostle was writing to people in Greece, the appearance to the five hundred must have occurred in Israel, where surely the majority of surviving witnesses still lived. We have no evidence that they traveled abroad giving their testimonies, nor that any Corinthians braved the Mediterranean waves to learn more. If, further, the Corinthians had known any of them, Paul could easily have written: “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, including your friends Faustinus and Vitus, although some have died.” He did not so write. Maybe, then, the Corinthians were almost as much in the dark as are we, unable to name or quiz any of those involved. (74)

Is this not the same Allison who wrote in the previous chapter that this is part of a summary credo that was connected with larger narratives? Did he not think it a simple inference justifiable by common human curiosity to say that people would have asked questions and not been satisfied merely with the bare assertions? Why, then, act as if these issues would not have been addressed? If the 500+ were featured in this summary before Paul, as I argue, then they would have been brought up in many settings before Paul reached Corinth (even in the earliest days), questions would have been posed, Paul would have spoken with others (particularly early followers like Barnabas, who may or may not have been one of the 500+), at least some names would have been procured, and Paul would have gone over this with the Corinthians when such questions came up with them (as Allison surmises they would have). He says this appearance must have occurred in Israel, which I think is a safe inference, and that surely the majority of the surviving witnesses still lived there, which I do not think is as safe an inference. If it happened between Passover and Pentecost, there is a good chance many of these people would have been pilgrims to Jerusalem, and thus may have returned to any number of places (for example, over a dozen places are referenced outside of Galilee and Judea as being places where the crowd of Acts 2 came from). Furthermore, why would we not think at least some, if not all of them, became evangelists among the earliest Christians and would be distinguished in this way, since the others listed did partake in these evangelistic efforts (and it is not unimaginable that they were among the 500+)? Since apostleship was, at least initially, tied to seeing the resurrected Jesus (1 Cor 9:1; 15:9), why would we not think that Barnabas (Acts 14:1–6, 14), as well as Andronicus and Junia (Rom 16:7), were among them? Perhaps Priscilla and Aquila were among them, as they were Jewish Christians in Italy before any apparent evangelization effort coming from Galilee or Judea reached there (Acts 18), had moved from Pontus (cf. Acts 2:9), and were known to the Corinthians (1 Cor 16:19). Silas/Silvanus may have been one (Acts 15:22; 1 Thess 2:7 [cf. 1:1]), but it is never directly said (he was known by the Corinthians as well, as can be seen from Acts 18:5; 2 Cor 1:19). All of them traveled and testified, and at least some of them were known to the Corinthians; why would we not think there were others not explicitly named who would be known to the Corinthians? Paul may not have specified any of them when he wrote this letter, but why would he need to specify them then as opposed to when he was among them evangelizing and teaching? Why does Allison, who thinks that questions would have been asked, think that the Corinthians would somehow not have asked for names and Paul would not have given names when he first proclaimed this gospel, which is what he is referring back to here? Or would they have never asked or been given names at any time in the subsequent eighteen months (Acts 18:11)? Furthermore, since there were obviously people of means among the Corinthians, who is to say no one could have traveled to visit with others, especially for the Jewish Christians who may yet have attended the pilgrimage feasts in Jerusalem? Granted, we do not know what they knew concerning the 500+, but these comments from Allison do not show due consideration for the possibilities, nor do they fit with what he himself said in the previous chapter.

I do not have much to write about Chapter 5, which concerns Jesus’s burial. I think Allison does well here in reviewing the claimed reasons for doubting the Gospel stories for Jesus’s burial as well as the stronger reasons for believing what they say about the burial (though he restricts himself to Mark’s story). Particularly helpful here is his review of evidence about the burial of crucifixion victims (over and against those like Crossan who think that Jesus was actually thrown into a mass grave and his corpse was eaten by dogs) from both primary sources and archaeological considerations (104–6). He also provides a good review of the case for the historicity of Joseph of Arimathea being involved in Jesus’s burial, as all four Gospels attest, though I think he is hasty in his dismissal of Joseph being a secret disciple as, “likely a late guess without historical merit” (114). But then again, for reasons I have indicated elsewhere, I am inclined to put more stock in John’s testimony, not to mention the other Gospel authors, than Allison is.

Chapter 6 is his review of the evidence of the empty tomb (I have done a comparison of the Synoptic versions of the story here). As with the previous chapters, this will be mostly familiar material to those who have read Allison’s Resurrecting Jesus. He first lays out the case against the empty tomb story and then the case for it. Of course, the rebuttal against the case against the empty tomb, insofar as some of the arguments depend on Mark ending at 16:8, would have been even stronger if he was not dismissive of 16:9–20, but oh well, we have already established he does not accept it as authentic. He also responds well to the argument from Paul’s silence about the empty tomb (131–36), which I have responded to elsewhere in my aforementioned article on bodily resurrection and expectations. Oddly enough, in a response to Michael Goulder’s argument of the empty tomb being a scripturally inspired legend based on apparent parallels with the OT, he does a thought experiment with parallels between Mark 14 and 4 Baruch 5, which leads him to say:

What explains these parallels? The answer is purely personal. As I was writing these pages on Goulder, I was simultaneously reading the page proofs of my commentary on 4 Baruch, and when I ran across one of my sentences that cites Mk 14:32 … in connection with 4 Bar. 5:16 … I decided to hunt for additional agreements between Mk 14:32-42 and 4 Baruch 5. There is nothing more to it than that. Seek and you will find. The parallels prove nothing except how simple it is, because of the far reach of coincidence, to compile parallels. (123)

If only the Dale Allison that wrote this had also written the aforementioned two lists of parallels from Chapter 4. Then he could have prevented the other Dale Allison from making unjustified inferences from those other lists of parallels and he could have cut down on elements of incoherency in the book. In any case, he thinks the strongest argument against the empty tomb are the unhistorical parallels (138–40), such as of various Greco-Roman analogies noted in John Granger Cook’s Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis (which also came up in a few early Christian sources, as I note here). Of course, such an argument amounts to a trial by proxy, an argument based on misdirection to avoid engaging with the specifics of the case in question, and the parallels are not so strong as to make Allison actually agree with this view, as he thinks the argument for the empty tomb is stronger.

The two arguments that convince him are that Mark 16:1–8 must contain a historical memory because of all the apparent apologetical glosses and expansions that other Gospel authors added (152–53) and the fact that women are the primary witnesses of the empty tomb in all four Gospels, despite the prejudice others would have against their testimony (154–62). Naturally, I do not agree with his construal of the first of these arguments, not only because of the dismissal of 16:9–20, but also because I do not regard these other versions as being “apologetic glosses and expansions.” As I go over in my synoptic analysis of the empty tomb stories (though I did not include John), things are rather more complicated with the different versions of the empty tomb story and there is only one segment with particularly significant overlap beyond the essential details shared between all versions. While I think the other arguments he analyzes are not as strong as the testimony of the women, I think he treats them too dismissively, instead of suggestively. I would think Allison would be sympathetic to such reasoning in light of how his earlier lists of parallels were not reliant on one or two elements that were stronger than others to link texts together but on the confluence of features he thought were suggestive, even if not of equal strength. He does at least adopt this approach with the argument from Paul on the possibility that he would have known tradents of the empty tomb story, but he acts as if it is only a possibility that Paul knew the major figures from Jerusalem and thus would have heard about the empty tomb (still, he ultimately dismisses its independent value despite his argument earlier in the chapter, as well as the one in Chapter 3 of how 1 Cor 15 fits the structure of the Gospel narratives, leading to further incoherency) and the dearth of expected theologizing features for late narratives, particularly in Mark (Wright has also gone over this and other indications, including the testimony of women, that shows the Gospel stories as being early rather than later inventions in The Resurrection of the Son of God, 600–611). Of course, the way he characterizes Mark is dependent on the assumed inauthenticity of 16:9–20. His dismissal of the value of the evidence of the proclamation in Jerusalem as an indirect testimony to the empty tomb also ignores the factor of persecution, but we will need to return to this later for fuller comment. (As for the other arguments, William Lane Craig responded to an earlier iteration of this chapter in Allison’s Resurrecting Jesus and I mostly agree with his comments, which are still applicable, though I would address Matthew’s story about the guards differently.)

The final section of this chapter is odd. He undermines the historicity of the angelic appearance in the empty tomb story, but he wishes to clarify that this is not because he is skeptical of the angels appearing, but because of what they say (165–66). In his words, quoting Pheme Perkins:

So although I reject the historicity of the content of the angel’s message because it “reflects the kerygmatic preaching of resurrection [for which he earlier cited 1 Cor 15:3–5 as a comparison] and thus requires an understanding of the significance of the empty tomb gained from the appearance tradition,” it escapes me why the report of a vision of angels should be doubted, as it is by some, for no other reason than that it is the report of a vision of angels. (166)

While the angelic declaration does anticipate the early gospel proclamations, as much else in the Gospels (besides the overall story they tell) does, Allison (and Perkins) has not adequately supported this idea that what the angels say requires an understanding of the events that could only come from later. Even if it did, this would hardly be surprising if angels were involved, which Allison does not dismiss out of hand, although he does dismiss the statement as reflected in Mark (even though Matthew and Luke have some relevant differences here). And if one grants the angelic appearance, would it not make sense for early summaries to resemble, in some way, the earliest one from the angels? But the fact remains that there is no element that could only be “gained from the appearance tradition,” as if such a thing was an entirely separate tradition, unless one begs the question and says that such a statement could only have emerged from any being in the universe after the first appearance, even though Mark (as well as Matthew and Luke in different ways) connect this not to further theological reflection, but to what Jesus had already said. His argument for dismissal of historicity is based on, you guessed it, questionable parallelism, this time with 1 Cor 15:3–5. He even has a small chart juxtaposing the elements of the texts, but he neglects to mention that, despite the broad similarities in content, the structure is different, as the reminder of his death is followed by the declaration of his resurrection and only then is there a reference to where he had been laid (which is connected with his burial), and the statement of “you will see him” (which is paralleled with “he appeared”) occurs after the reference to his disciples and Peter. As for the general similarities in content (which is not carried over as much in Matthew and certainly not in Luke, contrary to what one might expect in the face of an apparent tendency of apologetic revisions and expansions), I am not sure what else would be expected in a declaration of resurrection, especially in the context of the events of the Gospels, so I cannot see how anything is unusual here.

Chapter 7 brings us to Matt 27:51b–53, the story of the saints who rose. I have written some about this text elsewhere, including on some of the interpretive issues. It is obviously quite curious, but why is it here in this book about Jesus’s resurrection? It is a wedge for skepticism. In case one thinks that an uncharitable characterization, here is Allison writing in his own words:

The upshot of the preceding pages is that, at least in Matthew, fiction has found a foothold: we are here ‘in the region of Christian legend.’ That fiction, moreover, is about empty tombs and people seeing the dead …

The potential implications of such story-telling are sobering, especially when one agrees with me that Matthew, who was a relatively sophisticated individual with some sort of scribal background, took the fiction to be fact. (179)

While the silence of other sources concerning Lazarus’s resurrection and this resurrection of the saints are not easy to explain, I see no stronger reason to dismiss the latter than I did the former. Only a small minority of scholars who have written on the text—many others pass over the issue altogether—have written in defense of historicity (as Allison cites on 168 n. 7). I am inclined to agree with them, but because we have so little to go on, and Matthew is only interested in the story insofar as it serves as a sign pointing to Christ, one cannot exactly mount as robust a case for this event itself. Such a case will instead depend on what one thinks of the reliability of Matthew and (depending on how one argues for it, as here) of the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. I may write more extensively on such historical matters, whether in a commentary or otherwise, another time because there is so much to unpack in this text (in the meantime, I think Charles Quarles’s article on the text in JETS 59 is worth a read as a good review of the issues), but I do not think here that Allison can sufficiently make his case from an argument from silence or strangeness by asking questions and scoffing at absurdity (any more than I thought one could do so with the Lazarus story). It is curious how we see an apparently different Dale Allison from the one who wrote so cautiously and reservedly in previous chapters has emerged to write this chapter with such definitive statements like this one:

It stands alone, half a century or more after the incredible events it reports. Yet the stupendous marvels depicted in Mt. 27:51b-53, had they firm grounding in known fact, would quickly have become a bedrock of Christian apologetics, especially as the text speaks of “many” saints and “many” witnesses. While this is, to be sure, an argument from silence, some arguments from silence have force. Matthew 27:51b-53—which fails to name any of the “many” saints or any of the “many” to whom they appeared—is a religious fiction spawned by the religious imagination, the same source that gave us the seven sleepers of Ephesus and Saint Catherine’s exploding wheel. Reality has here melted into fable. (168)

Thus sayeth another version of Dale Allison. The silence is certainly curious, but on what basis does Allison say such events “would quickly have become a bedrock of Christian apologetics,” if such a thing did not even happen in texts written after Matthew was written? This slight story, used only as a sign, does not appear to have been appealed to especially often among those who did take it as firmly grounded in fact by virtue of appearing in Matthew. It had no clear prevalence among apologetic literature or texts devoted to teaching/defending resurrection belief, but not, as far as can be told, because of any doubts about what the text says. No one refers to the text in an apologetic context before the third century (even Origen, Cels. 2.33, which does reference 27:51, does not actually make reference to the resurrection of the saints, but only to the tombs being opened). (A fragment of Quadratus cited in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.3.2 may include the story in what he references, but it is not specifically referenced itself.) Where it is referenced before and after the turn of the third century (e.g., Ignatius, Magn. 9.2; Clement, Strom. 6.6; Tertullian, Adv. Jud. 13), the references are generally slight outside of commentaries. Why, then, ought we to think that this strange story would have been considered so crucial among their predecessors that they could scarcely have failed to mention it?

One other point from this chapter requires response as well, though it comes from a footnote, where Allison registers his displeasure with harmonization, the act of reconciling data from different sources to present a coherent account, usually while trying to maintain the integrity and veracity of the sources (see here and here for some older examples, and an argument for harmonization based on analogy with biographies of Abraham Lincoln here):

That some, such as Wenham, Easter Enigma; O’Connell, Jesus’ Resurrection, 166–77 (who confesses on p. 27 to belief in “the full inerrancy of the Bible”); and Schnabel, Jesus in Jerusalem, 350–70, are still endeavoring to iron out every discrepancy is dispiriting. They are trying to erase knowledge. It is as though Strauss never wrote, and as though the successes of redaction criticism in attributing differences between the synoptics to editorial agendas are a mirage. Explanation can lie only in adherence to outworn theories of biblical inspiration, theories the deists successfully pulverized long ago. (181 n. 79)

What a strange criticism this is. Why should it be dispiriting, even if they are wrong? This is not something he has a habit of saying about other views, trends, or schools of thought he thinks are wrong. “They are trying to erase knowledge”? What does that even mean? And on what basis are people supposed to think these scholars are erasing warranted true belief? Indeed, if they are right, would they not be adding to knowledge concerning how a given event or set of events could unify apparent discrepancies in accounts? For such a wild claim as is made here, you would need to demonstrate that whatever they are supposedly trying to erase is true and has epistemic warrant, which Allison does not do because he simply wants to move on after this potshot. Nor does he point to where we can find the demonstration of this. He only makes a vague gesture in David Friedrich Strauss’s direction, as if no one made a worthwhile response to whatever exactly he is drawing from him in the intervening century-and-a-half or so. Redaction criticism, whatever one makes of it, does not actively undermine what these scholars are doing, nor is it especially relevant for their purposes. And for all that he speaks of how he can imagine things across all these chapters, he apparently cannot imagine an explanation for undertaking such tasks besides “adherence to outworn theories of biblical inspiration,” without any specificity. What are these outworn theories and how did the deists successfully pulverize them while these authors and others apparently slept through it? Does he mean mechanical dictation theory? Does he honestly think any of these authors hold to that view of inspiration? (He says “theories,” but who besides this version of Dale Allison is to know what he has in mind?) Can he actually cite them saying so or make a cogent argument to that effect? The only evidence he proffers is a brief quote from McConnell, which tells us nothing about his beliefs about inspiration and conveniently ignores all that context of a fairly lengthy discussion of biases and their effects. It is almost as if this footnote did not need to be here at all. But a particularly overconfident and overly strident one of Dale Allison’s personalities was in charge of writing this chapter, so here we are.

Chapter 8 involves Allison revisiting the theory of Rudolf Pesch that the origins of belief in Jesus’s resurrection lie in Jesus’s ministry rather than in a time after it (Pesch at one point thought that the disciples combined their memories of Jesus with a supposed pre-Christian paradigm of a dying and rising prophet, as Allison reviews in Chapter 2). This leads to an analysis of the historicity of Jesus’s predictions of his death and resurrection. It is less detailed than what one will find on the subject in Michael Licona’s book on Jesus’s resurrection (the relevant section is based on his article for the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 8), but it is still a good overview of the considerations. Though he takes a rather circuitous route to get to the conclusion, he does properly recognize that, even if one were to think that the predictions would have primed the disciples to expect Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, the testimonies we have suggest that they were not so primed, given the motif of doubt (202–6). Those predictions were only called to mind later (in the case of the women, at least, I would think the angelic statement helped, but this is a point on which Allison and I diverge). He says at one point, summarizing all of Part II (Chapters 3–8), “What I take all this to mean is that it was not eschatological expectations alone that fashioned belief in Jesus’ resurrection. It was rather the complex interplay of three vital elements that begot such belief: pre-Easter expectations, appearances of Jesus, and a story about his empty tomb” (198). I would, of course, have a different view of these expectations than Allison, and I would also expand it to say Jesus’s broader teaching (including eschatology) had a role, but more in the sense of helping the disciples make sense of everything upon reflection. Any of my major disagreements have largely been covered in comments elsewhere (particularly about the nature of Jesus’s and Paul’s eschatological expectation).

As noted before, Part III involves Allison examining potential analogies for the Easter experiences of the disciples in an attempt to illuminate the history, as he thinks what we have is too slight (e.g., 209). Chapter 9 begins this effort with looking at studies of reported apparitions of the dead (primarily in the sense of bereavement experiences and not, say, necromancy). For this chapter, and indeed for this whole part one thing one must grant in Allison’s favor is his impressive breadth and depth of research. This is not his primary area of expertise, but he has clearly devoted much diligent work to expanding his horizons of research. I cannot say I really share his interest here (no doubt in part because I do not have an experience similar to his, as he relates on 215–16), and I do not think the information he brings forth is especially illuminating, but I say to give credit where credit is due.

Some of what he brings up later in this chapter I have addressed in my response to Chapter 3, but there is more to address here. One should note that, despite the apparent tenor of Allison’s presentation, he is not actually arguing that what we have in the appearances of the risen Jesus simply are what we also see in these other reports of apparition. As he says of the parallels he cites, “they may not be our Rosetta Stone, they are nonetheless heuristically profitable” (222). Indeed, despite the long list of parallels with various stories that he offers on 217–21, it is important to note that he is giving a composite picture assembled from a wide variety of sources and no one story exemplifies them all so as to provide a clear case of overwhelming likeness with the appearances of Jesus. In his own words:

Nonetheless, I know of no close phenomenological parallel to the series of likely events as a whole. Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision of at least one hostile outsider. Taken as a whole, this is, on any account, a remarkable, even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a good, substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it. (346)

He also says in this chapter that he desires neither to ignore similarities because of difference or to offer some reductionistic explanation of Easter based on the parallels; “My goal is rather to compare like with like and almost-like in order to enlarge understanding” (209). Along this same line of thought, he says, “So while I believe that Jesus, after his death, made himself known to his followers, I have no desire to bat away every intriguing parallel that comes into view. On the contrary, thinking without parallels means being pretty much stuck with rehearsing the Biblical accounts and leaving off there. That would be little more than Sunday school. We can do better than that” (209–10). Alright, if that is the route you wish to take, why, then, is the primary analogy put forth about apparitions of the dead? I would think the closer analogy would be stories of resurrection. After all, that is how these experiences are presented in our earliest sources, as experiences of one who is resurrected, of one who is no longer dead. According to the actual language used in the Gospels, it is not the once-alive, now-dead Jesus who appears; it is the once-dead, now-risen Jesus who appears. And it is not as if Allison would be working only with ancient sources here either. My old professor Craig Keener has collected such stories, even up to the time of publication, in his two books on miracles, as well as his article in the Bulletin of Biblical Research 25. This is not to say Allison cannot consult all of these stories that he has in this chapter, but why not also look at the closer analogy that actually fits with how the earliest Christians described their experiences? We will get a hint of at least one reason why in the next chapter.

Chapter 10 concerns another genre of analogy in visions. About half of this chapter is spent responding to attempts to undermine analogical connections and much of the rest concerns apparent collective visions or the specific case of Paul. Honestly, again, I am not as interested as Allison in all of this, particularly since it does not ultimately even convince him away from the idea of resurrection. Andrew Ter Ern Loke, in his own review, has engaged with Allison largely related to subjects covered in Chapters 9 and 10 and in related portions of the book. I am curious about the feedback from Michael Licona and Jake O’Connell on chapters like this one, but there is something else in this chapter I would rather discuss than the specifics of these claims that could take this review too far afield. What I find more interesting is the last section of this chapter titled “A Theological Footnote.”

He notes once again in comparison with the resurrection appearances, “I do not deny the differences. Those differences do not, however, cancel the similarities” (258). On the next page, in speaking of the peculiarity of Jesus’s resurrection appearances, he says, “The risen Jesus is not like the Lazarus of John’s Gospel, who exits the tomb for all to see (11:44-45). He rather appears out of the blue and disappears abruptly, as though he were instantly materializing and dematerializing” (259). And that, I am afraid, is, as far as I could tell, all he has to say in Part III about the parallels with other resurrection stories. When it comes to visions, differences do not cancel out the similarities so as to make them less relevant for analyzing the resurrection appearances. But apparently all that needs to be said about a category of experiences closer to the language actually used to describe what happened to Jesus is that Jesus was not like Lazarus. The differences supposedly overrule the similarities and make such stories irrelevant for analysis.

Later on the same page, Allison says, “It is equally anomalous that, according to the reports, when the risen Jesus appeared, some who had known him failed to recognize him or doubted what they saw. Something more than run-of-the-mill perception was involved. The appearances rather had uncanny features that suit visionary experiences better than everyday seeing” (259). This does not follow. In some cases, such as the seven disciples who went out fishing (as they were around 100 yards from the shore, it was early in the morning, and they were not expecting him there), there could well be more mundane explanations for why they might not have recognized him at first. I do think Jesus’s transformed physicality (as noted in my article about describing resurrection as “physical”) had something to do with this, and this may have contributed to the note in Matt 28:17 that “some doubted” (cf. Luke 24:41), but it is not straightforward as to what we are to make of that comment. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus who did not recognize Jesus at first are said to have been kept from recognizing him (Luke 24:13–16), which could imply that they might have recognized him more easily/quickly otherwise if their ordinary perception was not impeded. The transformation of Jesus in his resurrection does not imply anything about a non-ordinary kind of perception being necessary.

In the end, all of this leads to Allison stating his own discomfort with traditional resurrection belief, which he has also gone over in Resurrecting Jesus and Night Comes. Of course, there have been various philosophical problems raised for resurrection belief (see here and here for some examples), so there is nothing new here. While he acknowledges that early Christians taught that Jesus had a material (or physical) body in his risen state—and as he went over on 131–34 on how resurrection language was used outside of the NT—he insists, “The problem for us, however, is that we do not know what bodies are because, having been instructed by modern physics, we no longer know what matter is. The seemingly solid has dissolved into waves of probability” (260). You can do this kind of rabbit-hole-chasing doubt-casting with anything, so I am not sure why this comment is supposed to be especially significant. Take the concept of a “book” for example. Oh sure, the ancients thought they knew what a “book” was, but we who are living far removed from them cannot define such a concept anymore. What we have called “books” have come in so many different forms (and we have added yet more unclear categories like “booklet,” “essay,” “thesis,” “dissertation,” and so on), including the relatively recent invention of “e-books,” which the ancients could not have conceived of. We do not know what makes a book a book. Thus, the sentence “I wrote a book” is utterly ambiguous because we do not know what exactly a book is. In fact, the sentence “Dale Allison, Gary Habermas, and N. T. Wright have written books on resurrection,” is only someone’s attempt to give uniform meaning to experiences that could hardly have been alike in all particulars, and that by a concept we do not really understand. Indeed, what does it even mean to “write” a book? We no longer “write” like the ancients did. We tend to type when we say we “write,” but we also use that verb to describe writing with pens and pencils on things. What if we dictate? Are we actually writing or is someone/something else doing it for us? Can we properly say we are the “writer” if we employ “ghost writers”? Are any editors we consult not also writers under this ever-expanding concept? You see, we do not even know what writers are. But what does “are” actually mean? Do we know what the meaning of “is” is? If one wished, one could waste one’s life away in reducing all of Allison’s book or any other book into endless layers of indeterminacy. Or we could just work with what we have and with what has been communicated, including with the category of “body” in the context in which it is described.

After another paragraph of Allison flitting from this idea to that, he once again lands back on something more directly relevant to resurrection with these concluding thoughts that I quote in full:

What counts in the end, or so it seems to me, is not the metaphysical or ontological status of the bodily form of the enigmatic post-Easter Jesus—something nobody can know anything about—but the personal identity of the risen one with the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, and the circumstance that, whatever else he seemed to be, he was not an insubstantial, ghostly relic, the defeated victim of death. What is the advantage of an interpretation of the resurrection so literal that it forces the conclusion that the risen Jesus retained his kidneys and genitals, had a body full of carbon and oxygen atoms, and sported a material costume? [n. 133: But if our life in the world to come does not depend in any way on the recovery of our current flesh and bones or their composite pieces, why should it be otherwise with Jesus? Why, after Golgotha, did he need a terrestrial body if he was not going to live a terrestrial life?]

Traditionally, most Christians have believed that, at some point, Jesus passed ‘into a new mode or sphere of existence.’ I see no theological deficit in supposing that this happened before he appeared to Mary and Peter. (260–61)

Well, a rather obvious advantage is that a literal interpretation of the resurrection fits with how resurrection language was used at the time to refer to how the body that died was the body that rose, as Allison himself, or perhaps another Allison, noted in Chapter 6. Another rather obvious advantage for those who would rather not simply reject the declarations of the NT and substitute their own is that such a view would put us more in line with how the teachers of the NT presented resurrection as part of the gospel of what God has done and will do in Jesus. Whatever Allison’s problems may be with the doctrine of the eschatological resurrection and figuring out how such an event will work, how does it apply to Jesus in his resurrection? Whether he thinks it ought to have been necessary or not, if the meaning conveyed by the language of resurrection, in fact, fits what happened to Jesus, that provides an advantage over the alternatives. The mystery surrounding how to articulate his transformation is no reason to abandon a literal presentation of his resurrection. The fundamental continuity is the basis for the transformative discontinuity and for discussing the same (if there was no continuity, we are no longer talking about “resurrection” and we could no longer speak meaningfully about a consistent subject).

Chapter 11 continues Allison’s search for analogies. This time, he connects the disciples’ experience after Jesus’s death with bereavement experiences. He makes these comparisons in terms of the “sense of presence” (SOP), guilt and forgiveness, idealization, anger and polemic, and rehearsing memories. This chapter can provide a good breadth of resources for people wanting to read more about bereavement and how people experience it. Of course, as nothing here, even to Allison, justifies a reductionistic explanation about the claims of Jesus’s resurrection, particularly as one delves into the details referenced in each section, I pass over this chapter without further comment.

Chapter 12 concerns the Tibetan concept of the “rainbow body” and stories about it that Allison poses as analogies of the stories of Jesus’s resurrection. If you have not heard of this concept, it is a belief among some Tibetan Buddhist monks that some holy men after their deaths will be absorbed into the light of a rainbow while their earthly body dissolves. That is a simple definition, but there are a variety of meanings to it (as seen here), so it is perhaps no wonder that Allison does not provide a direct definition of what he is talking about here. Other reviewers have addressed other matters about this chapter, but I only make a couple of comments about definition and the comparisons he makes to a particular story.

First, we need to address this peculiar bit: “Christians are fond of affirming that the resurrection of Jesus is sui generis. In the words of Ben Witherington: ‘To date, there has been only one example of resurrection on this planet.’ If by this he means that Jesus is the only individual whose body has disappeared from this world and moved into some parallel universe or realm of being, then what of Trungpa’s report” (273)? Nani? I would only agree with Witherington’s quote if he added “eschatological” before “resurrection,” but I am aware that Witherington follows the all-too-common tendency that I have criticized of refusing to label temporary resurrections as “resurrections,” and instead preferring to label them as “resuscitations.” Still, as someone who presented on resurrection in a Biblical Theology class Ben Witherington taught, as someone who had Witherington as his dissertation mentor, and as someone who has read many of Witherington’s works, I cannot for the life of me figure out where Allison got the idea that Witherington would mean by “resurrection” a body disappearing from this world and moving into some parallel universe or realm of being. Nor does he (nor, as far as I know, can he) cite where Witherington defines it in this fashion. In fact, I am not sure who defines “resurrection” in this fashion. Even the quote that somewhat resembles this from the end of Chapter 10, which Allison derived from a source by R. A. Knox in 1913, does not define “resurrection” in this fashion, but it describes what happened as a result of Jesus’s ascension. As such, all his points built on other scholars not addressing this belief in a rainbow body and stories surrounding it as resurrection analogs (such as in response to Gary Habermas and Craig Blomberg on 284) collapse. Perhaps this incoherency was due to a different Dale Allison writing this chapter than the one who wrote Chapter 6 and presented a better description of what resurrection language refers to. However one explains the stories noted in this chapter, they are not instances of resurrection.

Second, Allison spends a significant portion of this chapter on the story of Achok/Khenpo A Chö (273–75). Indeed, he even refers back to the story in his final main chapter before the “Coda,” and says, “Such people are in the same position as someone who, although not a Tibetan Buddhist, judges from the evidence that Khenpo A Chö’s body vanished, after which he appeared to some of his disciples” (347). I apparently missed the second detail on the first reading, as all I remembered from the chapter was about the disappearance of bodies in multiple cases. In no other instance were specific appearances mentioned. Thus, I went back and found one sentence in the main body of text that mentioned this detail on p. 274 with reference to Francis V. Tiso’s book Rainbow Body and Resurrection. In the footnote attached to this one sentence, Allison provides a quote of a question-answer exchange with a monk, wherein the monk affirms that many disciples had what Tiso described as “a visionary experience,” adding that “He has appeared in dreams” (274 n. 11). A follow-up question prompts a response telling of one disciple, who was “in retreat at one time,” who had an experience when he was not sleeping of Khenpo A Chö, “tugging on his shirt sleeve and telling him, ‘Practice well, meditate well. Be attentive’” (274 n. 60). Considering that we are not told in the second instance that the disciple saw the man, how is this supposed to be equivalent (particularly since there is no equivalent here of other elements in the Gospel accounts of interaction with Jesus)? I know Allison has not distinguished between visionary experiences and the resurrection appearances, but if his goal is to stress the parallels in order to challenge apologists, who do make such distinctions, he is not on especially firm ground here. Likewise, the apologists would insist that an important difference exists between these reclusive monks, who are not persecuted for their claims on this matter or in general, and Jesus’s disciples and apostles who faced such prospects for their outgoing evangelistic efforts.

Chapter 13 concerns the matter of the cessation of Jesus’s resurrection appearances. Many tend to point to the forty days Luke references in Acts 1:3 after which he ascended as the key period (with one exception). Since this fits within the window between Passover and Pentecost, Luke is our earliest source on the matter (I see no merit in the arguments for dating Acts to the second century; for more on the dating of Luke-Acts, see Jonathan Bernier’s Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament, 52–66), and Luke had connections with the earliest proclamations and earliest proclaimers among the Christians, I am inclined to give him more credit than the figures Allison cites derived from Irenaeus’s Gnostic sources (Haer. 1.3.2, 30.14); Apoc. Jas. 2:20–21; and Asc. Isa. 9:16. It may be that their figures of eighteen months, 545 days, or 550 days were meant to account for the appearance to Paul, but that is speculation, as nothing in the sources more specifically indicates such. Paul is, of course, the obvious exception to this timeframe, and his self-description in 1 Cor 15:8 attests to this as well, so Allison’s attempt to cite him as overriding the stated timeframe rings hollow as some devastating response to apologists (287). But he goes beyond that. He cites Stephen as an exception as well (82, 287), but he does not reckon with the possibility that Luke and others did not consider this a resurrection appearance, in contrast to Paul’s experience (as I noted above). He also claims that 1 Cor 15 causes problems for this claim, but he never gives a clear reason as to why it is “most likely” that the appearances to the 500 and to James (he does not consider the appearance to “all the apostles” to be a distinct event, per 79–80) occurred after Pentecost (287). But then he goes even beyond that to say that reports of visions of Christ throughout Christian history challenge this idea of a limited time of Jesus’s resurrection appearances (287–92). Of course, this is due to Allison holding to no distinction between Jesus’s resurrection appearances and visions (despite the fact that he did not include several visions from Acts among the resurrection appearances in ch. 5). If one is not already inclined to do away with that distinction, this argument will not work either. Since Luke records other visions and does not think this problematizes his forty days claim, would it not be more reasonable to infer that he did not see these things as the same? Otherwise, there is no clear reason why Luke or anyone else would make any such distinction between the experiences of Christ by Christians pre-ascension and post-ascension, and why he and they would not continue to narrate such events as reported in Luke 24 in the later chapters of Acts and beyond. Just because Allison would rather do away with the distinction does not mean that this is a proper way to read the sources who maintained some distinctions.

Chapter 14, the shortest in the book besides the beginning and the end, describes the event of a Marian apparition at Zeitoun and its possible implications. While such events can be interesting, they would be more interesting if we were dealing with people who personally knew Mary, lived at the same time as her, or were in some way hostile to her. And they would be more interesting if they were more analogous to the narratives in the Gospels. Then it might be worthwhile to engage with them as analogs for a book on resurrection (though Licona has engaged with such stories and with questions of hallucination well in his book on his historiographical approach). What I would say is more worthwhile about this chapter is that Allison brings up the impact of worldviews. I have gone into some depth talking about worldviews and the scholarship around them in my dissertation (as well as here), so naturally I was appreciative of Allison bringing this up here and in his penultimate chapter. It is also because of worldview considerations that my own work on resurrection is more oriented towards the frameworks we use in how we talk about resurrection and towards theological analysis, as resurrection makes the sense that it does as part of a larger worldview. Worldview formation matters, not only the various historical considerations (as important as those are), as concerns in the study of history are also wrapped up in questions of worldview. Larger worldview considerations also help to convey why all of these historical issues matter, including the central one of if, in fact, Jesus rose from the dead.

Chapters 15 and 16 contain Allison’s responses to what he regards as tenuous arguments from both apologists and skeptics. Particularly interesting in the latter chapter are the thoughts he offers on why Jesus did not appear to outsiders or opponents (328–32; that is, besides Paul, possibly James, and maybe some of the 500+). As for the former chapter, I can generally agree with his critiques of the overeager rhetoric he cites examples of. Other arguments are a bit more subtle but still not especially valuable on a historical level (as in the case of the switch from Sabbath worship to Sunday worship, which is undermined by the fact that both were observed weekly for centuries, as seen in the Apostolic Constitutions and Eusebius, among others). And like Allison, while I have not done a great deal of study on the Shroud of Turin and the controversy surrounding it outside of reading some articles here and there, I do not think it is especially valuable for arguing for the resurrection specifically.

Where I think Allison is quite wrong is in his dismissal of the argument from martyrdom (308–11). I would say this could be modified to include the larger reality of persecution and conflict that the apostles faced, but Allison does not respond to this modified version and is content with dismissal. The issue is not so much sincerity of belief but why they held to this in the midst of the many trials they would face for the proclamation of the gospel, which was not only martyrdom, but also the ongoing preceding trials like what Paul lists in 2 Cor 11, or the various passages noted in my series on perseverance of the suffering faithful. But even for the appeal to martyrdom, he agrees that Peter, James the son of Zebedee, James the brother of Jesus, and Paul were martyred (308, 310). That is a pretty good baseline from which to proceed, no matter what one thinks of the traditions of what happened to the other apostles (Allison mentions Sean McDowell’s recent book on the subject, but he does not interact with it extensively). He also leads his readers on a wild goose chase for a point as he asks a series of irrelevant questions about if the Twelve would have agreed in everything or would have thought exactly the same way between given points in time (309). Why would any such things matter for the purposes of this argument if they maintained that God raised the crucified Jesus from the dead and exalted him to his right hand (as signified in the ascension), and they did so knowing the conflict it would bring (since Jesus had been crucified, taught them to expect conflict, they were imprisoned on multiple occasions, and Stephen and James the son of Zebedee died early on)? If there was significant deviation from any of them on this score sometime later in life, one wonders why their names were preserved in memory in the Gospels without any stories akin to Judas to explain what happened to them (whether in Acts, which does not lack conflict altogether, or otherwise). Indeed, it would be especially baffling if they remained distinguished in this fashion if, as scholars like Allison maintain, the Gospels were written after they all died, and they did not simply let the names of those who, in this scenario, apostatized fade away altogether.

In any case, Chapter 17 brings us to Allison’s attempt to summarize his inferences while he also raises further issues to consider for how to explain the data in question. The first quote I wish to share from this chapter is how he summarizes his historical conclusions:

My main historical conclusions in Part II are, within the broader context of critical study of the New Testament, quite conservative. They indeed border on the embarrassingly antediluvian. Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, buried Jesus, perhaps in a family tomb. Shortly thereafter, some of Jesus’ female followers found the entrance to that tomb open, his body gone. After that, likely quite soon after that, at least one of them, Mary Magdalene, had a vision of Jesus. Sometime later, in Galilee, Peter, probably aware of the story of the empty tomb as well as of Mary’s encounter and presumably her interpretation of it, also believed that he had met Jesus. Not long after that, the apostle and his companions returned to Jerusalem, where they began to proclaim that God had raised Jesus form the dead. By that time, additional members of the twelve had become convinced that they, too, had seen their lord, whether in Galilee and/or Jerusalem. Months or even years after that, something happened to convince members of a large crowd—“more than five hundred,” according to Paul—that they too had beheld Jesus. Subsequently, Jesus’ brother James made the same claim, and eventually also Paul of Tarsus. (336)

This conclusion well demonstrates how different readers will say Allison has not gone far enough in either direction, though he is closer to the traditional Christian view than any of the various skeptical scenarios put forth. Indeed, he spends a significant portion of this chapter laying out a skeptical scenario he does not adopt but that he thinks could be a reasonable reconstruction (338–41), yet he also offers responses to it (341–45). He also presents the traditional Christian view (345–46) and is not dismissive of it as an explanation. I noted earlier his comments that for all of his compiled parallels, there is no close parallel to the confluence of events in the Gospel resurrection narratives. This extraordinary confluence of factors leads him to say:

In view of the preceding considerations, one understands why the late Maurice Casey, a non-Christian who did not believe that Jesus rose from the dead, could write: “the historical evidence is in no way inconsistent with the belief of the first disciples, and of many modern Christians, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and granted visions of the risen Jesus to some of the first disciples, and to St Paul on the Damascus Road.” Casey was right. (346)

This illustrates well the importance of worldview considerations, as Allison himself brings up on 349, where he also mentions the example of Pinchas Lapide. Lapide was a Jewish scholar who believed that Jesus did rise from the dead, but he did not think of Jesus as some unique Messiah or as Lord because he interpreted Jesus’s resurrection in a different framework. Likewise, as I have observed elsewhere, it is possible that the Qur’an actually implies Jesus was resurrected. However, if that is so, Jesus’s resurrection would not be the foundational event that it is for Christomorphic resurrection belief in Christianity; his resurrection would be interpreted in an Islamic framework.

Indeed, in the basic confession that Allison examined back in Chapter 3, “God [has] raised Jesus from the dead,” every element is significant and is connected with larger worldview issues. When we say “God” raised Jesus, who is “God”? When we say God “raised,” that raises questions of what this verb means, why God performed this action, and what ongoing significance it has (as accentuated by the verb sometimes being in the perfect tense). When we say God raised “Jesus,” that raises questions of who Jesus is, and why he was given such a special dispensation. When we say God raised Jesus “from the dead,” that raises questions of why Jesus was singled out, what it means to be separated from the rest of the dead in this fashion, and if the event means anything for the rest of the dead. As one expands claims about Jesus’s resurrection, so too does one find a vast web of interconnecting worldview concerns, the sort of thing I wish to explore more in future work, particularly the book series I would like to write.

For all of my disagreements with Allison on his particular approach to these matters, I think the closing pages of his penultimate chapter (otherwise directed at what he regards as overreaching rhetoric on the part of Christian apologists) likewise illustrate the importance of worldview matters in exploring Jesus’s resurrection (359–63). As he says in his “Coda” (in place of a “Conclusion”), there is more to theology than historical criticism (or historical analysis for that matter).

In the end, Allison’s volume is at times helpful, even beyond the scope of the central concern of the book, it generally does well in going over the issues, and it is worthwhile to consult as a reference resource in any case. But I think it is plagued with some significant problems that limit how illuminating it can be. It is too diluted, too obstructed by what Allison calls his “multiple personality” and the effects that such incoherency has at crucial points.