Resurrection? Nah! Look for Another.

Now, if the idea that Jesus had been raised from the dead only started to crop up after twenty or thirty years of Christianity, as many skeptical scholars have supposed, those who understand the evolution of human thinking  would expect to find various strands of early Christianity in which there wasn’t much place for resurrection - or, if you did find resurrection, it should traceable back to some aspect of Judaism or pagan thinking. The wide extent and unanimity of early Christian belief in resurrection clearly point to something definitive happening, at the start, which inspired an unprecedented perspective in this amazingly unique Christian movement.

Let’s turn to the Jewish understanding of the Messiah.  In the first century, there were many other messianic movements whose would-be messiahs were executed. 

Why, in not one single case, don’t we hear any mention of disappointed followers claiming their hero had been raised from the dead?  Because… they knew better.

Resurrection was not a private event.  Jewish revolutionaries whose leader had been executed by the authorities, and who managed to escape arrest themselves, had two options: give up the revolution, or find another leader. Claiming that the original leader was alive again was simply not an option; there was no rationale for it.  Nobody said that about Judas the Galilean after his revolt ended in failure in AD 6.  Nobody said it of Simon bar-Giora after his death in AD 70. Nobody said it about Shimon bar-Kochbar after his defeat and death in 135.

Where messianic movements tried to carry on after the death of their would-be Messiah, their most important task was to find another Messiah.