Review of Why Believe in Jesus' Resurrection?

(avg. read time: 5–11 mins.)

Today, I will be reviewing a rather short book, which was also one of the last books written by the late NT scholar James D. G. Dunn:

James D. G. Dunn, Why Believe in Jesus’ Resurrection? A Little Book of Guidance (London: SPCK, 2016).

How little is “A Little Book of Guidance”? 44 pages (approximately 5” by 8.5”) all told, or shorter than some of my posts on this Substack. It piqued my curiosity not only because of my obvious interest in the subject, but also because it was one of Dunn’s last books, I had never heard of it until a couple years ago, and I had never seen him write much on this matter before (though he had written other things related to resurrection). If it had represented a condensed version of something he wrote about well and more extensively elsewhere, as might have been done by someone like Gary Habermas, Michael Licona, N. T. Wright, and so on, I might have found a book like this easier to recommend as a quick reference. But we are not reviewing “a book like this.” As the book stands, and as it does not significantly improve a part of his Jesus Remembered I found underwhelming, I am afraid I cannot recommend this book as “a little book of guidance” on the subject, and I would instead recommend that readers look elsewhere. To explore why, let us get into the details.

Dunn’s introduction is unremarkable, including a standard note about how we have no accounts of Jesus’s resurrection itself in the NT. This point is less significant in his argument than it is in the work of Sandnes and Henriksen, and if anything it serves to highlight how the first attempt to supply such an account in the Gospel according to Peter illustrates by contrast the sobriety of the NT Gospel accounts of Jesus’s empty tomb and appearances. He also upholds the typical distinction between “resurrection” and those other events, usually described as resuscitation or, as in Dunn’s case, “restoration to life.” I have argued before that this is not a helpful way of distinguishing these events as if “resurrection” does not apply to them, despite the terminology used by the earliest Christians, so we will not dwell on the matter further here.

His first proper chapter concerns what he says is the “only firsthand account” (4). In proceeding in this way, this “little book of guidance” not only ignores debates about Gospel authorship (which would be understandable), which Dunn was certainly aware of, but positively implies that none of the Gospels could have been written “firsthand.” I know he thought that way, but for what is supposed to be a little book of guidance, I do not see why someone thought it would be helpful for an author who thought this way to write in this way so as to raise problems for people who think otherwise and leave them unaddressed. With that said, this chapter is serviceable for illustrating the significance of the change in Paul’s life, how Paul explained it in terms of an encounter with the risen Jesus, and how he maintained this belief in the face of various challenges.

The next chapter focuses on earlier claims of encountering the risen Jesus, which naturally means he first focuses on 1 Cor 15. And here we encounter a confusing omission. If his point is to stress the historical plausibility of the resurrection reports so as to convey why one can believe in Jesus’s resurrection, I am not sure why he does not address not only when the appearances would have taken place, but also how early the summary Paul quotes would have been formulated (noted here especially). Once he moves on from 1 Cor 15, the summary becomes even shallower and presumptive. It is far from a unique weakness of Dunn’s that he blithely dismisses the rest of Mark 16 by saying, “Somewhat oddly, Mark does not record any appearance, but records that the women ‘saw a young man’ in the tomb who pointed them forward to appearances in the near future (16.7)” (13). Likewise, as we have seen elsewhere, Matthew and Luke do not exactly “follow” Mark (13), as on the level verbal similarity the accounts are more different than they are alike. If Dunn had stuck to attempting to answer the titular question rather than repeating (only some) popular scholarly ideas, maybe this chapter could have been more worthwhile. As it is, the only role it has in his conclusion is to contribute the point, all too indirectly, about “Disciples who seemed to have lost all hope, yet were transformed and became effective emissaries of one decisively rejected by the leaders of his/their own people” (39).

Another curious feature of his focus in this book is demonstrated by ch. 3 being the longest chapter in the book, as he focuses there on the tensions between the accounts but does not address them the best. The first concerns the role of women in the stories of the Gospels in connection with the fact that they are never featured in 1 Cor 15. His response to this is mostly fine, but I think the aforementioned book from Sandnes and Henriksen was much stronger in this regard. Still, it is particularly odd how he says, “And it is notable, as also surprising, that no women are mentioned in subsequent appearances [i.e., after one near the tomb]” (17). What is remarkable is that the women are mentioned at all, not only because of factors often noted, but also because while the women in question are said to have been followers of Jesus, they are either never mentioned (Matthew, Mark, and John) or scarcely mentioned (in Luke) prior to their presence at Jesus’s death. Why would their assumed but not stated presence not apply in at least some cases thereafter as it had prior to their presence at the empty tomb and at least one resurrection appearance?

The second tension he addresses is whether the resurrection appearances are best described as “visions” or as something more physical. I have addressed his misconceptions about the physicality of Jesus’s (and our) resurrection body in the aforementioned article here, and I have addressed related issues here, as well as in my dissertation (also see here and here). His suggestion that Paul recognized “that a too physical understanding of Jesus’ resurrection would be unpersuasive to a Greek audience” (19), is also something I have addressed in my work on the Corinthian resurrection deniers here and indirectly here. In the end, Dunn does not really give his readers clarity on these matters, which is at odds with this being a little book of guidance.

The third and fourth sources of tension he refers to can be addressed together, as they are about if the appearances took place in Jerusalem or Galilee, and for how long Jesus made resurrection appearances. Both of these issues are not about what one text says being in contradiction to another text, but of one (or more) text(s) saying one thing and of another text (or set of texts) not saying the thing. I have addressed similar statements from Allison about the forty days in Luke and other records of resurrection appearances in my review of his latest book on resurrection here. And it is difficult to avoid the impression that in this little book of guidance that Dunn is going out of his way to introduce confusion, such as in his claim of how Apollos cannot be squared with Luke’s account of when Jesus appeared to the apostles (23), but he is never actually called an apostle in the NT (Dunn cites 1 Cor 4:9 earlier in the book [12], but this does not refer to Apollos as being among the apostles). That impression is further reinforced when this chapter contributes nothing to his conclusion.

The fourth chapter concerns the empty tomb tradition. Here, he at least points to indicators of why the burial accounts are reliable. Beyond that, his account of the details and differences once again introduces confusion where the book is supposed to provide clarity. There is no reason, for example, to posit that the empty tomb tradition “may have been neglected” (30; cf. 28) simply because references to such do not appear outside of narratives. For reasons I have already highlighted elsewhere, for as often as it is thought to signify tension in early Christianity that Paul does not reference the empty tomb in 1 Cor 15, this is not a problem at all. Indeed, the semantics of resurrection would rather clearly indicate, in the absence of disambiguation, that the tomb was empty. He also tries to introduce more tension than is present by acting as if Mark’s reference to the “young man” is some problem for the idea that this was an angel (29–30) or that “John certainly includes no angels” (30), which is factually incorrect (John 20:12). Still, he does ultimately argue for the tomb being actually empty, so credit where it is due.

The fifth chapter deals with the question, “Why resurrection?” That is, why is this the notion that the earliest Christians used to explain what happened to Jesus? To begin with, he addresses where the idea of resurrection came from, and here he makes a common mistake. Immediately after posing the question, he says, “We know that the hope of resurrection only became prominent among Israelites in the period known as late Second Temple Judaism” (35). This is not, in fact, something we know, but it is a common supposition based on available literary evidence. It also does not answer the question, as Dunn is referring to when it became prominent, and not when it emerged, and I have noted in my series on resurrection in the OT that there was much preparing for what would become a more fully articulated hope of eschatological resurrection.

Another common mistake he makes in this chapter is to think that Jesus’s expectation of resurrection was in some way connected to a notion that the end would absolutely come soon, as he thinks is indicated by the reference to Jesus being the first fruits of the resurrection and other aspects of NT expectation. I have also noted this problematic assumption in my review of Allison’s book, as well as here. What is worse, he says outright that “The fact that what they believed had happened to Jesus was not the beginning of the end of the age, was not the ‘first fruits’ of general resurrection, as the image of ‘first fruits’ would usually signify, was doubtless embarrassing” (38; emphasis original). With such a claim, I am forced to ask who this book is really for and how it is supposed to be helpful to them. And why does Dunn say such a thing anyway? When Paul wrote that description, it was over twenty years after Jesus’s resurrection, so obviously the metaphor was not supposed to indicate temporal proximity.

Dunn’s conclusion ends with “So, was Jesus raised from the dead? There’s a lot more going for a positive answer than simple trust in the accounts of Paul and the Gospels” (40). It would have been nice if the book actually built up to such a conclusion so that it did not feel tacked on. Nothing even in the conclusion section directly leads up to it. It is not the general tone of the book, which is too reserved. One also would have hoped that something directed to laypeople or ministers needing a quick book of guidance would have tied to the titular question answers of why Jesus’s resurrection matters or other theological issues, since believing in Jesus’s resurrection is not only a matter of assent to an explanation of an historical event. Maurice Casey could say that the historical evidence is not inconsistent with traditional Christian belief about God raising Jesus from the dead without himself coming to faith (as far as I know). Pinchas Lapide could affirm that God raised Jesus from the dead without thereby declaring that Jesus is Lord. Surely believing in Jesus’s resurrection means more than that, as it meant more in the confession of the earliest Christians. And surely a book purporting to answer the question “Why believe in Jesus’ resurrection?” should strive to answer that question with something more.

It is not that I take issue with the level of detail. I get that this is supposed to be a “little book of guidance.” But the points Dunn focuses on are wrongheaded and provide needless levels of distraction and confusion if his point is to provide guidance to answer “why believe in Jesus’ resurrection?” If Dunn had written with better focus, clearer conviction, and less insistence on reciting less-than-helpful scholarly tropes, maybe this book could have been what its subtitle promised to be.