Post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus

From Textus Receptus

The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are the earthly appearances of Jesus to his followers after his death, burial and resurrection. Believers point to them as a major proof of his resurrection and identity as Messiah, seated in heaven on the right hand of God (the doctrine of the Exaltation of Christ). There is a strong early tradition that the family and immediate followers of Jesus saw Jesus after his death.

Background

The resurrection of the flesh was a marginal belief in Second Temple Judaism, i.e., Judaism of the time of Jesus. The idea of resurrection first emerges clearly in the Book of Daniel. A few centuries later the Jewish historian Josephus, writing roughly in the same period as Paul and the authors of the gospels, says that the Essenes believed the soul to be immortal, so that while the body would return to dust the soul would go to a place fitting its moral character, righteous or wicked. This, according to the gospels, was a similar stance to that of Jesus, who defended it in an exchange with the Sadducees:

"And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven. And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?" (Mark 12:24-25)

"And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." (Luke 20:34-36).

The experiences of the risen Christ attested by the earliest written sources – the "primitive Church" creed of 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:8 and Galatians 1:16 – are ecstatic rapture events and "invasions of heaven". A physical resurrection was unnecessary for this visionary mode of seeing the risen Christ, but the general movement of subsequent New Testament literature is towards the physical nature of the resurrection.

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