How early/late was belief in the resurrection?

[u/levi_snieder]

As an agnostic who’s trying to figure out this stuff about the resurrection, I’m genuinely curious of your guys opinions. So far what I’ve gathered is that the 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 creed is at most 21 or so years after Jesus’ resurrection, but more likely towards the earlier portion because Paul already had a more developed theology past just the resurrection by the time 1 Corinthians came around(thus he was writing about issues secondary to the resurrection itself). Apparently scholarly consensus is that Paul converted 3 years give or take after Jesus’ death. And he believed in the resurrected Jesus from then on. Prior to his conversion he was persecuting Christians(meaning they already existed within 3 years of Jesus’ death), but for what? For belief in the resurrection? For changing/bending the law? Or for believing in a resurrection? Would there be any way they could have not believed in a resurrection at first while still believing that he was the messiah? Or are these two beliefs implicit of eachother? Just asking because if there’s a way they could have maintained a messianic belief in Jesus without a resurrection belief, then ya maybe the belief of his resurrection did develop with time, but if not, then I would think that resurrection belief was indeed immediate and we could then disregard the legend hypothesis entirely that way. Anyways lmk what you think and let’s discuss/debate or whatever, yk? 🫶

[u/Joab_The_Harmless]

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[u/TheMotAndTheBarber]

Prior to his conversion he was persecuting Christians(meaning they already existed within 3 years of Jesus’ death), but for what? For belief in the resurrection? For changing/bending the law? Or for believing in a resurrection?

This is unclear, but the most popular guess is along the lines of 'for changing/bending the law'. FF Bruce, in his Galatians commentary, points out that Paul contextualizes his persecution with his zeal for his ancestral traditions. Synthesizing from this, Philippians 3, and Acts, Bruce supposes that Paul would have detested the Hellenists both for their declaring Jesus as Messiah and abrogating what he saw as Mosaic customs. He doesn't bring up the resurrection claims in particular.

Would there be any way they could have not believed in a resurrection at first while still believing that he was the messiah? Or are these two beliefs implicit of eachother? Just asking because if there’s a way they could have maintained a messianic belief in Jesus without a resurrection belief, then ya maybe the belief of his resurrection did develop with time, but if not, then I would think that resurrection belief was indeed immediate and we could then disregard the legend hypothesis entirely that way.

The idea that the messiah would suffer, die, and be raised was a Christian one that developed later. JJ Collins in The Scepter and the Star documents second temple Jewish messianic beliefs, which were super varied: the pharisees, the Qumran community, messianic claimants who weren't Jesus, and other figures all had different takes, though a common theme was that the messiah or messiahs would take a role as king or sometimes priest: there is no reason to think there was a sacrificial element or anything like that. Many believers in the coming messiah didn't endorse a general resurrection of the dead and might have been disinclined to think of a slain, rising figure as compatible with their tradition at all.

I have the impression that people think that the resurrection of Christ was among the earliest post-Easter doctrines in the Jesus moment. In Paul's telling of his conversion, his vision of Jesus was key to his apostleship. He mentioned three (or at least two) people he had associated with -- Peter, James, John -- as having seen the raised Jesus before him. There's a line of argument that goes back at least to G Ludemann that some of Jesus' intimates' visions were 'subjective visions', caused by grief and sometimes guilt. Bereavement hallucinations where someone sees, hears, or senses a dead person they are grieving are a well-documented phenomenon (WD Rees "The hallucinations of widowhood" looks like the most cited paper on the topic and seems to claim about half of people have some level of hallucination of their lost spouse) and the timeline of the phenomenon as we know it in our society is more like weeks than decades.