Abstract
This essay argues that comparative microhistory offers a largely neglected but especially productive practice for the historical study of the resurrection of Jesus. After introducing the key features of microhistory and the justifications and objections surrounding comparative approaches, the essay demonstrates the value of the practice through a focused case study. Two early modern English resurrection accounts – those of John Robins and Dorcas Erbury – are used as comparanda to defamiliarise the resurrection narratives and illuminate Matt 28:17, the unresolved doubt of some disciples before the risen Jesus. The comparison generates a range of historically plausible interpretative possibilities and demonstrates the wider utility of comparative microhistory for the study of early Christianity.
1 Introduction
This essay concerns the historical study of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, but not the question of its historicity.1 Although the question of whether Jesus was raised from the dead – the central claim of early Christian kerygma2 – overshadows many studies of the resurrection, it does not exhaust the historical questions that can be asked about the event. Rather, this essay explores what can be known about how Jesus’s closest followers interpreted the resurrection and argues that comparative microhistory, a methodological approach largely neglected in this field yet especially suited to it, can open up fresh ways of understanding the forms those interpretations may have taken.
However, before demonstrating the potential utility of comparative microhistory for the study of the resurrection, it is necessary to offer a brief account of microhistory itself, together with some remarks on comparative approaches within it,3 given the relative unfamiliarity of such practices among scholars of the historical Jesus and the New Testament more generally.4
2 Microhistory
Microhistory emerged in the 1970s, most famously in the works of the Italian historians Edoardo Grendi, Giovanni Levi, and Carlo Ginzburg. In the Anglophone world, however, it was Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, published in English in 1980, that established microhistory as a leading mode of historical inquiry, and the work remains paradigmatic in many respects.5 Despite significant developments over the last fifty years, and considerable diversity among practitioners,6 nonetheless, microhistory can be characterised by the following features:7
1.
A Reduction in the Scale of Historical Analysis
As Ginzburg put it, the presumption is that “by narrowing the scope of our inquiry, we hope to understand more.”8 Typically, this involves the intensive study of a narrowly bounded historical case, such as a single event, a small-scale community, an individual, or even an object.9
2.
The Belief That Intensive Analysis of Small-Scale Historical Cases Reveals What Would Otherwise Remain Obscured
The narrowing of the focus of historical analysis should not be mistaken for limited ambition. One of the central claims of microhistory is that its “reduction of the scale of observation”10 enables “aspects of a large historical process [to] be observed that would remain invisible under the homogeneous categories of macro-history,”11 thereby creating “an opportunity to see the world in a grain of sand”12 and to “search for answers to large questions in small places.”13
3.
The Centring of Individual Agency
Although the structures that constrain agency may become less visible at this scale of analysis, they are no less real for that. Yet microhistorians insist that individuals are not simply determined by such structures; people in the past “are not merely puppets on the hands of great underlying forces of history, but they are regarded as active individuals, conscious actors.”14 They are not naive, and are aware that agency is constrained by the context within which it is exercised. Most would agree with Marx’s famous dictum that “Men [sic] make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”15 But, at the same time, they recognise that such circumstances are themselves created and sustained through individual human action.16
4.
A Focus on the Marginal and the Exceptional in Society
Microhistory “swarms with underlings and outsiders.”17 This is because such individuals often illuminate tensions within groups and societies, as those who disrupt social norms frequently reveal them precisely by transgressing them. But also because such troubling figures are more likely than most of their contemporaries to leave behind rich archival traces for this very reason, with Carlo Ginzburg’s heretical miller Menocchio a quintessential example.
Although microhistory is not identical to “history from below” – the historiographical approach concerned primarily with ordinary people rather than elites and their institutions – the two share significant affinities.18 Whilst it is possible to have microhistories of the privileged and the powerful, as well as those who occupy the middle strata,19 practitioners have generally focused on those drawn from the great mass of the population in any epoch,20 individuals who can be termed the “exceptional normal.”21
5.
A Distinctive Evidentiary Paradigm
Although microhistorians deploy a diversity of methods, many of which are traditional to critical historical analysis, Ginzburg has identified a particular approach taken by most that reflects its distinctive evidentiary paradigm and which he terms “the method of clues.”22 This begins by identifying “something that does not quite fit, something odd that needs to be explained,”23 that is, whatever is exceptional or anomalous. This is often something that appears, at first sight, to be inconsequential or even trivial, such as a recent study that took as its point of departure a snowball fight that erupted on the island of Murano in 1511.24
The justification for this approach is that such apparently minor events can reveal tensions and processes that are not necessarily visible at a larger scale. When these “clues” are placed under the historical microscope and subjected to close textual and contextual analysis, informed by disciplined imaginative inference, they can yield insights into broader historical meanings that might otherwise remain obscured. In the case of the Murano snowball fight, the analysis revealed how it laid bare the social and political world of early modern Italy and the ways in which identity and power were articulated by those ruled by Venice.25 At its best, the “method of clues” will allow the historian to generate a form – although nearly always a very partial and provisional form – of the historical “thick description” associated with the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz.26
6.
A Broadly Realist Epistemology
Although microhistory emerged in reaction to the collapse of grand historical narratives advanced by historians committed to large-scale, synthetic explanations of historical change, its early practitioners resisted the postmodern turn in historiography and insisted that “historical research is not just a rhetorical or aesthetic activity.”27 Microhistory has typically retained a broadly realist epistemology inherited in part from the Marxist historiographical traditions within which many of its pioneers initially worked.28
These characteristics of microhistory suggest that the resurrection is especially well suited to analysis using this approach. After all, despite its significant consequences, the event itself appears initially to have been one that was small in scale: the first Easter and the appearances of Jesus in the days that followed seem to have involved only a handful of people, making the resurrection precisely the kind of event that is the stuff of microhistory. The Gospel accounts and the material in Acts limit the appearances of the risen Jesus to the disciples and some of the women associated with them.29 Paul does refer to a much larger number, claiming that Jesus appeared not only to “Cephas” (1 Cor 15:5), but also to the Twelve, more than five hundred brothers and sisters, James, all the apostles, and finally Paul himself (1 Cor 15:6–8). But the most obvious reading of this tradition is that, aside from the reference to Cephas, Paul is referring to appearances of the risen Jesus that occurred sometime later, over a period extending beyond Easter and its immediate aftermath.30 Indeed, the tradition that the risen Jesus appeared only to a limited number of people seems to have furnished Celsus with one of his grounds for attacking Jesus’s divine status.31
The figure of Jesus also appears to be exactly the kind of individual to whom microhistorians are drawn. He was not someone with the social or economic status that usually left a mark on the sources that we have for ancient history32 and yet this carpenter was sufficiently anomalous in the eyes of at least some of his contemporaries that a range of Christian and non-Christian texts claim to preserve details his life and death.33 Unlike virtually everyone else who lived and died in the early Roman empire, Jesus escaped “that most final, and brutal, of life’s inequalities,” the inequality between “who is remembered and who is forgotten.”34
Likewise, microhistory has long been drawn to what has been termed “the deviant event,” that which “in its strangeness, challenges values, institutions and principles, and jostles narrative habits of those who perceive it and respond.”35 By this definition, it is difficult to imagine a more deviant event than the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
3 Comparative Microhistory
However, the form of microhistory that is especially helpful for the historical scrutiny of the resurrection is comparative microhistory, a methodological development within microhistory advocated by leading figures such as Ginzburg and Levi.36 Although comparative microhistory still centres upon a single case, it recognises that placing it alongside analogous cases can deepen our understanding of it and illuminate the range of plausible interpretative possibilities or affordances it presents.
Although some biblical scholars might baulk at the idea of using a comparative method of any kind to interpret the resurrection, especially those who have a prior commitment to it being a sui generis event,37 it is a method widely used in the natural and social sciences,38 and one that has been employed in historical enquiry since at least Herodotus.39 It is also a method long used within the broader study of religion that, despite its critics,40 is now enjoying something a revival.41 Comparison is widely employed by New Testament scholars too,42 and has always been a tool in the study of the historical Jesus and the emergence of Christianity.43 Indeed, it was a tool used by the early opponents and defenders of the resurrection itself,44 and remains central to many critical debates on the subject today.45
There are many reasons for undertaking comparative historical analysis. For reasons of clarity, it may be helpful to enumerate some of these.
1.
Comparison Provides a Means of Evaluating Hypotheses
In a discipline unable to test its claims through experimentation, comparison offers an alternative, though less certain, way of assessing them.46
2.
Comparison Can Counter Disciplinary Parochialism
Many sub-fields of history are plagued by a narrowness of intellectual vision, a problem that has, until recently, particularly afflicted the study of the historical Jesus.47 Comparison, by its nature, counters this limitation.
3.
Comparison Can Generate New Interpretative Possibilities
At its best, comparison can produce “unexpected juxtapositions that fire the imagination”48 and encourage the consideration of previously overlooked factors.
4.
Comparison Can Facilitate Enstrangement
Comparison can render the familiar strange so that it can be reconsidered anew, a transformation that can be termed enstrangement. The choice of this somewhat unusual word, in preference to the more familiar term estrangement, is deliberate and worth further comment. Although there are ways of understanding estrangement that might be helpful for studying the historical Jesus more generally – and Darko Suvin’s concept of cognitive estrangement49 has considerable potential for scrutinising the parabolic and eschatological imaginaries associated with him50 – estrangement tends to connote a state of alienation and even hostility. In critical literature, the concept is also frequently associated with particular ideological commitments, such as Darko Suvin’s Marxism. However, enstrangement has been introduced to the critical lexicon in the last few decades thanks to Benjamin Sher’s influential translation of the Russian literary theorist, Viktor Shklovsky.51 The term allows for a relationship between the interpreter and the thing-made-strange that need not be negative. Enstrangement conveys the notion of defamiliarisation rather than alienation.52
Having sketched some of the justifications for comparison, it is also necessary to note some of the objections to the method and the responses offered in its defence.
1.
It Is Impossible to Determine Criteria for What Cases Can Be Productively Compared
Disagreements about what can and cannot be legitimately compared have been endemic since comparison first emerged as a historiographical method.53 At its worse, comparisons can appear arbitrary and idiosyncratic, overly dependent upon a scholar’s subjective judgement or personal interests. However, meaningful grounds for comparison may be established through prima facie similarities (for example, of form, structure, function, or context). And, perhaps counter-intuitively, difference as well as similarity can be an important factor in making a choice of comparandum as it can enhance the potential for enstrangement. However, as Mikhail Krom observes, “Scholars currently tend to consider that the comparability of historical phenomena is not established a priori, but is determined in each specific instance depending on how questions are formulated in the research.”54 For comparative history to be successful it is necessary, from the outset, to “clearly specify the aim of the research and formulate the issue that can be solved or elucidated using comparison.”55 In practice, the suitability of the cases chosen for comparison will only become apparent in retrospect.
2.
Comparison Requires a Harmful Degree of Abstraction
In order to undertake comparison, it is necessary not only to select cases but also to abstract them, to some degree, from their original contexts. Yet this process can flatten their historical particularities – the distinctive, specific, and context-dependent features that largely constitute them and which normally form the substance of historical enquiry. The approach will therefore always be, to a certain extent, in conflict the basic principles of historical scholarship.56 But whilst this might go against the grain for many of those trained in the study of earliest Christianity and should make us proceed with appropriate caution, it does not invalidate the approach.
3.
Comparison Requires a Level of Expertise in Two or More Distinct Fields That Is Unattainable
It has been said that comparative historians are those who do twice the work and receive half the credit.57 However, although there are exceptional scholars who do manage to become proficient in more than one field,58 this is not necessary for comparison to be usefully applied as a historical tool. In most cases where it has been effectively deployed, historians are engaged in what Jürgen Kocka has termed asymmetrical historical comparison, “asymmetrical in the sense that they investigate one case carefully while limiting themselves to a mere sketch of the other case(s) which serve(s) as comparative.”59
4.
The Conclusions Drawn from Comparison Are Difficult for Others to Evaluate
This objection is related to the one we have just addressed. Without a specialist knowledge of the different cases that are the subjects of comparison, those who wish to make use of the results of comparative scholarship may feel unable to do so with confidence. In cases where the comparison draws upon unfamiliar fields, they may have little choice but to accept on trust both the analysis and the data upon which it is said to be based.60 However, as already noted, most historical comparison is asymmetrical, meaning that these demands are often less extensive than might initially be assumed. The objection can also be addressed, at least to some degree, by broadening the range of expertise involved in the professional evaluation of scholarship within the field.
4 A Comparative Microhistorical Study of the Resurrection
Having now introduced comparative microhistory, let us turn to its specific application. What follows is not a full exercise in comparative microhistory itself, but rather a brief demonstration of how the approach might illuminate the study of the resurrection. There are four steps to the following analysis: (1) the formulation of the aim of the microhistorical enquiry; (2) the introduction of two comparanda; (3) the re-reading of the now enstranged resurrection accounts using Ginzburg’s “method of clues”; and (4) the elucidation of the interpretative possibilities that one particular “clue” may reasonably permit, an undertaking informed both by its original cultural and literary contexts and by insights derived from the comparative cases.
4.1 Formulating the Aim
Following Krom’s recommendation, it is necessary, at the outset, to “clearly specify the aim of the research and formulate the issue that can be solved or elucidated using comparison.”61 In this instance, the aim is to determine whether a comparative microhistorical approach to Jesus’s resurrection can deepen our understanding of the range of interpretations that may plausibly have been available to those portrayed in the Gospel accounts as witnesses to the event.
4.2 The Comparanda
Two cases of resurrection from early modern England, that of John Robins and Dorcas Erbury, will be used as comparanda for the resurrection of Jesus. They have been selected as, like the resurrection of Jesus, both are small in scale, involving only a handful of people, and were also regarded by their contemporaries as deviant. Obviously, they are culturally and temporally distant but this is deliberate. By examining these singular, contrasting stories and then returning to the resurrection of Jesus, the intention is to make the resurrection strange again, and benefit from the interpretative possibilities this affords. If I had chosen resurrection accounts that were culturally and temporally closer62 it would be harder to engender this enstrangement and too easy to fall victim to parallelomania, and become sidetracked by speculations about whether there is some “direct organic literary connection” between the things beings compared.63 As I have discussed the cases of Robins and Erbury in detail elsewhere, I will only provide a very brief account of both, sketching the salient features.64
4.2.1 John Robins
In London, in 1650, John Robins was many things. He was “God Almighty […] the Judge of the Quick and of the Dead,”65 the father of a soon to be born Christ,66 and the man who would imminently lead 144,000 Jews back to the Promised Land.67 In addition, and most importantly for our purposes, he was not only the “first Adam […] risen again from the dead”68 but his closest followers – numbering about a dozen – were convinced that he had raised them and many more besides.69
By the end of 1651, following the arrest of God and his core followers for blasphemy, most, including God, appear to have recanted.70 Robins affirmed the Apostles’ Creed, including its clause about the (future) resurrection of the dead,71 and denounced those who continued to maintain their faith in him as deserving to be hanged.72 Although the group vanishes from the historical record soon after this, it is likely that some, and perhaps even Robins himself, remained certain that resurrections that had taken place in London in 1650. For example, a few decades later, one follower who had left the movement before it came to the attention of the authorities, continued to claim that they had occurred,73 although he became convinced that they were done by the power of “the very prince of devils in this last Age.”74
4.2.2 Dorcas Erbury
In Exeter gaol sometime in the summer of 1656, the early Quaker leader James Nayler (Naylor), “the onley [sic] begotten Son of God” and “the Holy Lord of Israel,”75 raised another Quaker, Dorcas Erbury (Erbery/Erberie)76 after she had been dead for two days, in front of witnesses, including her mother.77 Erbury went on to testify to the truth of this event before magistrates in Bristol,78 and later, before a committee of Parliament in Westminster.79 There is no evidence that she ever changed her mind on the issue and she remained an active Quaker, even suffering further imprisonments as a consequence of her forthright Quaker preaching.80
A number of others, at least initially, shared her opinion, with one Quaker responding in print to critics with the question, “Is it blasphemy to raise from the dead?”81 But from the outset there were dissenters, even among the inner circle who were incarcerated with Erbury and Nayler, with two of them, Samuel Cater and Robert Crab, apparently unconvinced.82 Even Richard Rich, one of Nayler’s greatest supporters, who continued to champion him long after the latter’s death,83 and knew all those involved well,84 made no mention of the resurrection in his writings in support of the charismatic Quaker.
Nayler himself appears to have completely changed his mind about whether it had occurred at all. After initially believing he had resurrected Erbury,85 he later explicitly denied it.86 He had good reason to reconsider the issue. Not long after the resurrection, he had ridden into the city of Bristol, surrounded by followers, including Erbury, declaring “Hosanna, holy, holy, King of Israel,”87 having also deliberately modelled his appearance to resemble that of Jesus.88 The event became infamous throughout England and beyond89 and resulted in an unprecedented trial for blasphemy before Parliament. He was sentenced to prison but not before he had endured a series of brutal punishments, including being whipped and pilloried, having his tongue bored through with a hot iron, and the letter B for blasphemer burned onto his forehead.90 When he was released, he complained that he had been led astray by others “not in the light and Truth of God” and disavowed his actions and those of his followers.91 After his sensational fall from grace,92 miraculous claims, although never “a fundamental, distinguishing characteristic” of early Quakerism,93 became increasingly uncommon among the movement as a whole.94
4.3 Rereading the Resurrection
As noted above, microhistory is distinguished by its distinctive evidential paradigm, Carlo Ginzburg’s “method of clues.” So, we should start by rereading the resurrection narratives and identifying “something that does not quite fit, something odd that needs to be explained,”95 looking for anomalies, inconsistencies, omissions, and anything otherwise curious. This kind of close reading is familiar to those who have been trained in Redaction Criticism, which likewise presupposes that apparently insignificant details may reveal something important about the processes that led to the formation of the text being analysed. However, whilst Redaction Criticism is primarily concerned with what such things can tell us about the editorial practices, redactional tendencies, and theological commitments of the author,96 Ginzburg’s method is interested in identifying peculiarities from which historical realities behind the text can be inferred.
There are potentially a myriad of anomalous features of the resurrection narratives found in the Gospels that invite further scrutiny. One thinks here, for example, of the absence of any resurrection appearances at all in the earliest version of Mark’s gospel, or Luke’s decision to exclude Galilee as a place where the risen Jesus would appear.97 The unusual words spoken by the Johannine Jesus to Mary in John 20:17 when she finally recognised him, “
Needless to say, a great deal has been said about all these things, and other potential “clues.” However, returning to the resurrection narratives after our engagement with the comparative evidence from the early modern period, and viewing them through the lens of the resulting enstrangement, while also attending to the microhistorical emphasis upon the agency of all the actors involved in the record of an event, draws attention to another “clue” that has yet to be the subject of sustained analysis: Matthew 28:17 –
This detail of Matthew has attracted considerably less attention than many other anomalies in the resurrection narratives. For example, in the 817 pages of his magnum opus arguing for the historicity of the resurrection, N.T. Wright devotes only a single paragraph to this verse.98 It is difficult to know why this is the case. It is not as though there are any textual grounds for dismissing its authenticity. Perhaps because the other Gospels contain accounts in which uncertainty is overcome – whether it is caused by the failure of some to recognise the risen Jesus when he appeared to them (Luke 24:13–35 [cf. 24:31], 24:36–43; John 20:11–18; 21:1–14) or because they are sceptical of the testimony of others who claimed to have seen him (Mark 16:11, 13, 14–18; Luke 24:13–35 [cf. 24:11, 23]; John 20:25–29) – the problem posed by this single instance of unresolved doubt may seem less acute and easily passed over. Or possibly the sheer profusion of positive claims about the appearance of the risen Jesus in early Christian accounts have overshadowed this one apparently negative tradition.
Those who have attended to this awkward verse have focused upon its grammatical rather than historical problems and in particular whether
What exactly they doubted is not obvious, given that
But before we do this, it is necessary to address the immediate objection that some might have at exploring this possibility. The notion that at least some of the apostles were unconvinced that Jesus had risen from the dead, seems, at first sight, unlikely and it is a position rarely held by New Testament scholars.112 Apart from Matthew 28:17, no extant tradition in either early Christian literature or the writings of its critics explicitly supports such a claim.
Nevertheless, the suggestion is not as implausible as it might initially appear. Although the Twelve are central to traditions about the life of the historical Jesus,113 they soon fade from view after his death. Although they receive some attention as a group at the beginning of the Acts (1:1–26), in the rest of the book only Peter, John, and James the brother of John are mentioned by name, which is increasingly dominated by Paul from chapter nine onwards.114 Outside of Acts and the Gospels, only Peter and John are named in the New Testament, if we exclude the pseudonymous claims of apostolic authorship of a number of epistles.115 Although the Twelve retained a limited symbolic significance (e.g., 1 Cor 15:5; Rev 21:14),116 and extensive legendary traditions concerning all the individual disciples developed in later literature and art,117 little can be established historically about most of them, since virtually all surviving sources, including the accounts of their martyrdoms, were written at least 150 years after their deaths.118 In fact, there is not even a stable list of exactly who they were.119 It therefore remains possible that, apart from figures such as Peter, John, and James, some apostles may have left the movement altogether, or, if they remained within it, promoted forms of Christianity in which the resurrection of Jesus held little significance. Something approaching this may be reflected in texts such as the Epistles of James and Jude, or in the so-called “Two Ways” tradition underlying a cluster of early Christian writings including the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Doctrina apostolorum.120 Indeed, largely through the work of Markus Vinzent, the possibility that some early forms of Christianity, at least prior to Marcion of Sinope, were relatively uninterested in the resurrection has become considerably less implausible than it once appeared.121 However appealing it might be, we cannot claim that all the disciples “were confident in the resurrection.”122 We just do not know that to be the case with any certainty and Matthew 28:17 may indicate otherwise.
4.4 Interpretative Possibilities
Having responded to this potential objection, we can now explore possible explanations for the doubt of some of the disciples. This is achieved by interpreting the datum within its first-century literary and cultural context, while remaining attentive to the interpretative affordances suggested by our early modern comparanda.
The doubt of some of the disciples has traditionally been understood as being of three possible kinds: doubt that the risen Jesus was a legitimate object of worship;123 doubt that the figure they saw was the risen Jesus; doubt about what exactly, if anything, they had seen. Let us now examine each of these possibilities in more detail.
The disciples may have doubted that the risen Jesus was a legitimate object of worship because:
-
They did not believe that being resurrected was sufficient grounds to merit worship. After all, in Matthew’s own narrative, it is implied that the disciples had seen plenty of other resurrections of the dead before that of Jesus and no indication that any of those figures deserved worship (Matt 10:8, 11:5). According to Matthew’s narrative, Jerusalem had recently been filled with resurrected saints, none of whom merited worship (Matt 27:52–53). Indeed, in the early Roman Empire it was not unusual to believe that the dead – not just those who appeared to be dead124 – could be restored to life, leave an empty tomb behind, and engage in everyday activities such as walking, eating, drinking, and sex.125
-
They did not believe that Jesus had returned from the dead in a form that warranted worship. For example, they may have believed that what appeared to them was a ghost. Such a reaction to the risen Jesus is found in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 24:37, 39), and Matthew had already indicated earlier in his narrative that the disciples were capable of interpreting Jesus in this way (Matt 14:26).126
-
They believed that Jesus had risen from the dead as a result of nefarious, prohibited means. For example, they might have thought that he appeared before them as a result of magical techniques of some kind, such as those used by the witch of Endor to summon up Samuel.127 This was an influential biblical narrative in the period128 and necromancy was well known across the cultures in the Roman Empire,129 so the belief that some could conjure up the spirits of the dead, and even reanimate corpses of the recently deceased, was familiar to many.130
Even if the disciples thought that what they saw looked like Jesus, they may have doubted that it was him because:
It is also possible that the reason for doubt was less dramatic:
However, armed with our comparative knowledge of the cases of Erbury and Robins, we might go further, and raise other reasonable possibilities that have not been considered in the critical literature.
5 Conclusion
This has been a paper intended to show the value of comparative microhistory as a means of generating fresh thinking about the study of the resurrection. It does not matter too much if the specifics of what I have argued here have been convincing in all their details for this to be the case. For example, in enumerating the possible reasons for the doubt of the disciples I am not suggesting any particular one provides the definitive explanation for this unusual feature of Matthew’s Gospel, nor, indeed, that I have captured all the possibilities that we should consider. This is not the kind of historical enquiry that can ever be settled, and microhistory has always embraced uncertainty.140 What I hope I have done is demonstrated that this approach can be productive. Indeed, it has the potential to make us think afresh about many other subjects in the study of the history of earliest Christianity and its founding figure. Comparative microhistory, and the enstrangement it encourages, widens our historical imagination and, like the Matthean scribe, enables us to bring out from the text “what is new and what is old” (Matt 13:52), setting fresh interpretative possibilities alongside more familiar ones. And that, surely, is beneficial for anybody working within the field or invested in its implications, theological or otherwise.
John E. Thiel, “On the Historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection,” SJT 79, no. 1 (2026): 1–17,
E.g., Rom 10:9.
Microhistory is best described as a practice rather than a method as the latter term implies an associated technique or procedure, and microhistorians themselves have resisted rigid methodological codification and deploy a diversity of methods, see Thomas V. Cohen, “The Macrohistory of Microhistory,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 47, no. 1 (2017): 53–73,
For an unpublished exception, see Richard J. Bauckham, “Gospels as Micro-History & Perspectival History,” 16 February 2011,
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980),
See István M. Szijártó, “Arguments for Microhistory 2.0,” in Fear of Theory: Towards a New Theoretical Justification of Biography, eds. Hans Renders and David Veltman, Biography Studies 3 (Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2021), 211–227,
See István M. Szijártó, “Introduction: Against Simple Truths,” in What Is Microhistory?: Theory and Practice, by Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and István M. Szijártó (Abingdon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), 4–5,
Carlo Ginzburg, “Latitude, Slaves, and the Bible: An Experiment in Microhistory,” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 3 (2005): 665,
Szijártó, “Introduction,” 4.
Levi, “On Microhistory,” 99.
Christian G. De Vito, “History Without Scale: The Micro-Spatial Perspective,” Past & Present 242, Supplement 14 (2019): 353,
John-Paul A. Ghobrial, “Introduction: Seeing the World like a Microhistorian,” Past & Present 242, Supplement 14 (2019): 13,
Charles W. Joyner, Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 1,
Szijártó, “Introduction,” 5.
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, ed. C.P. Dutt (New York, NY: International Publishers, 1963), 15.
See István M. Szijártó, “The Periphery and the New Millenium: Answers and New Questions,” in What Is Microhistory?: Theory and Practice, by Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and István M. Szijártó (Abingdon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), 75,
Thomas V. Cohen, Roman Tales: A Reader’s Guide to the Art of Microhistory, Microhistories (Abingdon: New York, NY: Routledge, 2019), 5,
Andrew I. Port, “History from Below, the History of Everyday Life, and Microhistory,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. James Wright, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2015), 108–113,
E.g., Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2006); Vincenzo Barra, The Musician and the Senator: The Microhistory of a Friendship, Microhistories (Abingdon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2023),
E.g., Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2013); Guðný Hallgrímsdóttir, A Tale of a Fool?: A Microhistory of an 18th-Century Peasant Woman, Microhistories (Abingdon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021),
Risto Alapuro, “Revisiting Microhistory from the Perspective of Comparisons,” in Historical Knowledge: In Quest of Theory, Method and Evidence, eds. Susanna Fellman and Marjatta Rahikainen (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 133.
For Ginzburg’s discussion of this method, see Carlo Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm,” in idem, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans. John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 87–113,
Matti Peltonen, “Clues, Margins, and Monads: The Micro–Macro Link in Historical Research,” History and Theory 40, no. 3 (2001): 349,
Claire Judde de Larivière, The Revolt of Snowballs: Murano Confronts Venice, 1511, trans. Thomas V. Cohen, Microhistories (Abingdon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2018),
This method has had its critics, although it has been influential in disciplines beyond history. Despite Ginzburg’s defence of its rigour, its centring of intuition and conjecture has led its critics to argue it is too subjective. E.g., Tony Molho, “Carlo Ginzburg: Reflections on the Intellectual Cosmos of a 20th-Century Historian,” History of European Ideas 30, no. 1 (2004): 121–148,
Levi, “On Microhistory,” 102; Stuart Clark, “Thick Description, Thin History: Did Historians Always Understand Clifford Geertz?,” in Interpreting Clifford Geertz: Cultural Investigation in the Social Sciences, eds. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Philip Smith, and Matthew Norton, Cultural Sociology (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 106,
Levi, “On Microhistory,” 98.
Levi, “On Microhistory,” 98. Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism appears to have significant potential for microhistorians seeking to understand the relationship between the micro and macro scales in which they are interested; see Gaurav C. Garg, “Between Global History and Microhistory: Rethinking Histories of ‘Small Spaces’ and Cities,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 66, no. 1 (2024): 32–56,
See Matt 28; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24; John 20–21; Acts 1:13 also presents a similar, limited audience.
According to Acts, Matthias was only appointed as Judas Iscariot’s replacement after Jesus’s ascension (Acts 1:26), so the appearance to the Twelve must have been sometime later than the period covered in the Gospels, with the other appearances, which seem to be listed in a chronological order, following even later.
Origen, Cels. 2.63.
Although he may have been supported by some who did, see Luke 8:1–3.
Works on this subject are legion but helpful surveys of the non-canonical sources can be found in Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, Studying the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000); Jens Schröter, The Apocryphal Gospels: Jesus Traditions Outside the Bible, trans. Wayne Coppins, Westar Tools and Translations: Early Christian Apocrypha 9 (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021); Margaret Williams, Early Classical Authors on Jesus, The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries 7 (London; New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2022). See also the recent contribution on Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum, the earliest Jewish source for Jesus: T.C. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ (Oxford; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2025),
Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier, “Ancient History from Below: An Introduction,” in Ancient History from Below: Subaltern Experiences and Actions in Context, eds. Cyril Courrier and Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira, fwd. Brent D. Shaw, Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies (Abingdon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021), 3.
Cohen, Roman Tales, 7.
Alapuro, “Revisiting Microhistory from the Perspective of Comparisons,” 133.
A relatively common claim. See the discussion of this in Dale C. Allison, The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (London; New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2021), 273; Richard C. Miller, Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity, Routledge Studies in Religion 44 (New York, NY; Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 161.
E.g., Charles C. Ragin, The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014),
Mikhail Krom, An Introduction to Historical Comparison, trans. Elizabeth Guyatt (London; New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 7,
E.g., Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion 14 (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1990); Arvind Sharma, “Orientalism and the Comparison of Religions,” in Comparing Religions: Possibilities and Perils?, eds. Thomas Athanasius Idinopulos, Brian C. Wilson, and James Constantine Hanges, Numen Book Series 113 (Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2006), 221–233,
For a recent defence of the comparative method in the study of religion, see Bruce Lincoln, Apples and Oranges: Explorations In, On, and With Comparison (Chicago, IL; London: University of Chicago Press, 2018).
E.g., John M.G. Barclay and Benjamin G. White, eds., The New Testament in Comparison: Validity, Method and Purpose in Comparing Traditions, LNTS 600 (New York, NY; London: T&T Clark, 2020).
See Smith, Drudgery Divine.
E.g., Origen, Cels. 2.55–58. Justin Martyr appealed to such parallels to defend the plausibility of belief in Jesus’s resurrection, see Justin, 1 Apol. 21.
E.g., Gary R. Habermas, “Resurrection Claims in Non-Christian Religions,” Religious Studies 25, no. 2 (1989): 167–177,
See William H. Sewell, “Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History,” History and Theory 6, no. 2 (1967): 208–218,
An observation made by a number of critics, e.g., James Crossley, “The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus,” JSHJ 19, no. 3 (2021): 261–264,
Michael Hanagan, “ ‘Shall I Compare Thee …?’ Problems of Comparative Historical Analysis,” International Review of Social History 56, no. 1 (2011): 138,
Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 1979),
Although this concept was developed by Suvin to explain a characteristic of modern Science Fiction, it has applications for the analysis of ancient texts too, see Eleni Bozia, “Lucian of Samosata’s Imaginative Divine and Human Landscapes,” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 13, no. 1 (2024): 176–197,
The term has been used since 1990 to translate the Russian neologism ostranenie (остранение), see Victor Shklovsky, Theory of Prose, trans. Benjamin Sher, intro. Gerald L. Bruns (Champaign, IL; London: Dalkey Archive Press, 2015), xviii–xix,
Though Sher would object to treating enstrangement and defamiliarisation as expressing related concepts, see Shklovsky, Theory of Prose, xix.
Krom, An Introduction to Historical Comparison, 90.
Krom, An Introduction to Historical Comparison, 91.
Krom, An Introduction to Historical Comparison, 97.
Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka, “Comparative History: Methods, Aims and Problems,” in Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective, ed. Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor (New York, NY; Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), 25,
Jürgen Kocka, “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg,” History and Theory 38, no. 1 (1999): 41,
E.g., Allan Mitchell, The Great Train Race: Railways and the Franco-German Rivalry, 1815–1914 (New York, NY; Oxford: Berghahn, 2000),
Kocka, “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison,” 41.
A similar concern has contributed to the suspicion of the comparative method among many within the study of religion, see Stausberg, “Comparison,” 28.
Krom, An Introduction to Historical Comparison, 97.
Such as the cases discussed in Origen, Cels. 2.55–58.
Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” JBL 81, no. 1 (1962): 1,
Justin J. Meggitt, “The Resurrection and Comparative Microhistory,” in The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus, ed. James Crossley and Chris Keith (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2024), 515–521.
Lodowick Muggleton, The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit in Five Parts (London: s.n., 1699), 21. For Robins’s claim to divinity, see also Anon., A List of Some of the Grand Blasphemers and Blasphemies, Which Was Given in to the Committee for Religion (London: Robert Ibbitson, 1654); John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton, Transcendent Spirituall Treatise upon Several Heavenly Doctrines from the Holy Spirit of the Man Jesus, the Only True God (London: s.n., 1653), 7; John Taylor, Ranters of Both Sexes, Male and Female (London: John Hammon, 1651), 2; Joshua Garment, The Hebrews Deliverance at Hand (London: s.n., 1651), 4.
Taylor, Ranters of Both Sexes, 2; Reeve and Muggleton, Transcendent Spirituall Treatise, 8; E.H., All the Proceedings at the Sessions of the Peace Holden at Westminster, on the 20. Day of Iune, 1651 (London: Thomas Harper, 1651), 8.
Garment, The Hebrews Deliverance, 4; Muggleton, The Acts of the Witnesses, 21.
Muggleton, The Acts of the Witnesses, 21.
Muggleton, The Acts of the Witnesses, 21; E.H., All the Proceedings at the Sessions, 4.
Ariel Hessayon, annot., ed., and intro., The Refiner’s Fire: The Collected Works of TheaurauJohn Tany (London: Breviary Stuff Publications, 2018), 538–539.
G.H., The Declaration of John Robins, the False Prophet, Otherwise Called the Shakers God (London: R. Wood, 1651), 4–5.
G.H., The Declaration of John Robins, 4.
Muggleton, The Acts of the Witnesses, 20–21.
Lodowick Muggleton, A True Interpretation of the Eleventh Chapter of the Revelation of St. John, and Other Texts in That Book (London: Published by the author, 1662), 155, 157, 158,
Anon., A True Narrative of the Examination, Tryall, and Sufferings of James Nayler (London: s.n., 1657), 8; John Deacon, An Exact History of the Life of James Naylor with His Parents, Birth, Education, Profession, Actions, & Blaspheemies [Sic] (London: Edward Thomas, 1657), 25; Ralph Farmer, Sathan Inthron’d in His Chair of Pestilence (London: Edward Thomas, 1657), 18; William Grigge, The Quaker’s Jesus (London: Matthew Simmonds, 1658), 10.
Dorcas was her name before she was brought back from the dead, see Acts 9:36–42.
Farmer, Sathan Inthron’d in His Chair of Pestilence, 19; Anon., The Grand Impostor Examined, or, The Life, Tryal and Examination of James Nayler the Seduced and Seducing Quaker (London: Henry Brome, 1656), 34.
Deacon, An Exact History, 11; Richard Blome, The Fanatick History, or, An Exact Relation and Account of the Old Anabaptists and New Quakers (London: J. Sims, 1660), 101; Anon., A True Narrative, 8.
Anon., The Grand Impostor Examined, 34.
Joseph Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings of the People Called Quakers, vol. 1 (London: Luke Hinde, 1753),
Anon., A True Narrative, 8, see Kate Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 241, n. 33.
They were both questioned by magistrates but unlike the others in the inner circle, were allowed to go free. They attributed no exalted status or powers to Nayler, see Grigge, The Quaker’s Jesus, 11; Trevett, “William Erbery and His Daughter Dorcas,” 37.
E.g., Robert Rich, Hidden Things Brought to Light (London: Francis Smith, 1678), 38.
Anon., The Grand Impostor Examined, 23.
Anon., The Grand Impostor Examined, 18; Anon., A True Narrative, 15; Euan David MacArthur, James Nayler and the Quest for Historic Quaker Identity, Brill Research Perspectives in Quaker Studies (Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2024), 37,
James Nayler, A Collection of Sundry Books, Epistles and Papers, ed. George Whitehead (London: J. Sowle, 1716), liv.
London, Library of the Society of Friends, Swarthmore MSS 1.188.
One of Nayler’s followers had on their person a copy of the Letter of Lentulus, a popular apocryphal text that provided a description of Jesus. See William C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism, 2nd ed., ed. Henry J. Cadbury, intro. L. Hugh Doncaster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 253; Henry J. Cadbury, “Early Quakerism and Uncanonical Lore,” HTR 40, no. 3 (1947): 177–205,
For evidence of its significance outside of England, see Brandon Marriott, Transnational Networks and Cross-Religious Exchange in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds: Sabbatai Sevi and the Lost Tribes of Israel, Universal Reform: Studies in Intellectual History, 1550–1700 (Abingdon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 37–62,
Anon., A True Narrative, 34–35.
Richard Hubberthorn and James Naylor, A Short Answer to a Book Called The Fanatick History (London: Giles Galvert, 1660), 3,
Most famously the failed resurrection of William Pool in 1657. See George Fox’s Book of Miracles, 2nd ed., ed. Henry J. Cadbury, fwds. Rufus M. Jones, Jim Pym, and Paul Anderson (London: Friends General Conference and Quaker Home Service, 2000), 11–13.
MacArthur, James Nayler and the Quest for Historic Quaker Identity, 37.
George Fox, writing in the mid-1670s, says of this earlier period, “Many great and wonderful Things were wrought by the heavenly Power in those Days […] beyond what this unbelieving Age is able to receive or bear,” George Fox, A Journal or Historical Account of the Life, Travels, Sufferings, Christian Experiences and Labour of Love in the Work of the Ministry, of … George Fox, ed. Thomas Ellwood (London: Thomas Northcott, 1694), 28,
Peltonen, “Clues, Margins, and Monads,” 349.
The best introduction to Redaction Criticism remains Norman Perrin, What Is Redaction Criticism? (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1969),
The risen Jesus appears in Galilee in Matthew 28:16–20 and John 21. Luke not only omits any resurrection appearances in Galilee, but also the Markan traditions that indicate that this is where Jesus is expected to be seen after his death (Mark 14:28; cf. Matt 26:32; Mark 16:7; cf. Matt 28:7, 10).
N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (London: SPCK, 2003), 643.
For the partitive interpretation, see P.W. van der Horst, “Once More: The Translation of oi
For a useful discussion of the issues, see J. David Woodington, The Dubious Disciples: Doubt and Disbelief in the Post-Resurrection Scenes of the Four Gospels, BZNW 241 (Berlin; Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2020), 84–96,
For the wider narrative, see Matt 14:22–33; Mark 6:45–52.
E.g., Charles H. Talbert, Matthew, Paideia (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 312.
E.g., Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, PNTC (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1992), 745; Erich Klostermann, Das Matthäusevangelium, 3rd ed., HNT 4 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971), 231,
Reeves, “They Worshipped Him, and They Doubted,” 345.
Matthew’s positive redactional portrayal of the disciples has led some to argue for this position. See Alan Hugh McNeile, The Gospel According to St. Matthew: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Indices (London: Macmillan, 1915), 434,
Marie-Joseph Lagrange, Évangile selon saint Matthieu (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1923), 543,
Jesus and the disciples (Mark 16:11, 13–14; Luke 24:13–35; John 20:14, 21:4); Joseph and his brothers (Gen 42:7–8); Jacob and Leah (Gen 29:23–25); Abraham and the three angels (Gen 18:1–8); Gideon and the angel (Judg 6:11–22); Manoah, his wife and the angel (Judg 13:6–21). See also Tobit and Raphael (Tobit 5:4–12:15).
See W.D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Vol. 3: Commentary on Matthew XIX–XXVIII, ICC (London; New York, NY: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 1997), 682.
David Woodington has argued otherwise. He maintains that Matthew, by not giving a straightforward resolution found in the other Gospels, “portrays the Eleven in a way that acknowledges the reality of doubt in the Christian life,” Woodington, The Dubious Disciples, 97. From what we can tell of the early reception of Matt 28:17 amongst the proto-orthodox, the doubt of the disciples was far from helpful in the way Woodington suggests. Instead, emphasis is put on the importance of its unequivocal resolution. See, for example, Epistula Apostolorum 10–12. Even for the gnostic Christians, the doubting disciples became models of how not to respond to the resurrection, although for different reasons, see Atkins, The Doubt of the Apostles, 214, 225, 231. Perhaps, then, when Benedict Viviano remarks that the disciples’ doubt in Matt 28:17 “gives hope to moderns,” he inadvertently reveals how anachronistic readings such as Woodington’s may be, Benedict T. Viviano, “The Gospel According to Matthew,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, eds. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, and Rowland E. Murphy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 674,
It is unconvincing to claim, as Reeves does, that because
E.g., for “speculation” as an unacknowledged method in the sciences, see Richard Swedberg, “Does Speculation Belong in Social Science Research?,” Sociological Methods & Research 50, no. 1 (2021): 45–74,
Although there are some, e.g., see Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching (London; New York, NY: T&T Clark International, 2010), 480–481.
Matt 10:1, 5; 11:1; 19:28; 20:17; 26:14; Mark 3:14; 4:10; 6:7; 9:35; 10:32; 11:11; 14:10, 17, 20, 43; Luke 6:13; 8:1; 9:1, 12; 18:31; 22:3, 30, 47; John 6:67, 70, 71; 20.24.
Peter: Acts 1:15; 2:14, 37, 38; 3:6, 12; 4:8; 5:3, 8, 9, 15, 29; 8:20; 9:32, 34, 38–40; 10:5, 9, 13–14, 17–19, 21, 23, 25–26, 32, 34, 44–46; 11:2, 4, 7, 13; 12:3, 5–7, 9, 11, 14, 16, 18; 15:7; Peter and John: Acts 3:1, 4, 11; 4:1, 13, 19; 8:14, 17, 25; John: Acts 12:2; James (the brother of John): Acts 12:2. These three are also singled out in the Gospels, see Matt 17:1; Mark 9:2; Luke 9:28 (cf. Luke 8:51).
Peter (Cephas): Gal 2:7, 8, 11, 14; Peter (Cephas) and John: Gal 2:9.
The reference to the “Twelve” in 1 Cor 15:5 implies an appearance after Mathias has been chosen as Judas’s replacement (Acts 1:26) and is in conflict with the appearances to the “Eleven” found in Matt 28:16–18, Luke 24:33–50 (Mark 16:14) and implied in John.
E.g., see Roald Dijkstra, The Apostles in Early Christian Art and Poetry, VCSup 134 (Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2016),
See Sean McDowell, The Fate of the Apostles: Examining the Martyrdom Accounts of the Closest Followers of Jesus (Farnham; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015),
Compare the lists found in Matt 10:2–4; Mark 3:16–19; Luke 6:13–16 (Acts 1:13). The author of Luke-Acts corrects the list provided by Mark, replacing Thaddeus with Judas, son of James (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13). John contains no list and of the seven disciples he names (Peter: 1:42; Andrew: 1:40; Philip: 1:43; Nathanael: 1:45; Thomas: 11:16; Judas: 14:22), he diverges from Mark by including not just Judas the son of James, but another figure, Nathanael, as well as giving prominence to one that is not named, the so-called “beloved disciple” (John 13:23; 20:2; 21:7, 20).
Edwin K. Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus: Redrawing the Religious Map of Antiquity, WUNT 266 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 128–131,
Markus Vinzent, Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity: And the Making of the New Testament (Farnham; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011),
W. Brian Shelton, Quest for the Historical Apostles: Tracing Their Lives and Legacies (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 5.
This is a position proposed by L.G. Parkhurst, “Matthew 28:16–20 Reconsidered,” ExpTim 90, no. 6 (1979): 179–180,
See G.W. Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian, Sather Classical Lectures 58 (Berkeley, CA; London: University of California Press, 1994), 99–119; Jan Bremmer, “Ghosts, Resurrections, and Empty Tombs in the Gospels, the Greek Novel, and the Second Sophistic,” in The Gospels and Their Stories in Anthropological Perspective, eds. Joseph Verheyden and John S. Kloppenborg, WUNT 409 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 233–252; Judith Perkins, “Fictive Scheintod and Christian Resurrection,” Religion and Theology 13, no. 3–4 (2006): 396–418,
For example, Philinnion in Phlegon of Tralles, Mirabilia 1, see William Hansen, ed. and trans., Phlegon of Tralles’ Book of Marvels, Exeter Studies in History (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1996), 25–28, 65–85; D. Felton, Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1999), 26–29. For other revenants, see Phlegon of Tralles, Mirabilia 3.4–5; Heliodorus, Aeth. 6.14–15; Apuleius, Metam. 1.5–19; 2.21–30; Lucan, Pharsalia 6.588–830; Matt 27:52–53; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.3.2. See also John Granger Cook, “Resurrection in Paganism and the Question of the Empty Tomb in 1 Corinthians 15,” NTS 63, no. 1 (2017): 56–75,
See also Mark 6:49. For examples of belief in the visible, post-mortem spirits resembling angels within Judaism in this period, see 1 En. 39:5; 45:4–5; 51:4; 54:1–2; 104:4; 2 Bar. 51:1–12; Matt 22:30, Mark 12:25, Luke 20:36.
1 Sam 28:3–25, Sir 46:19–20.
Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 38.
Daniel Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy (Princeton, NJ; Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2004). The most famous, paradigmatic example is the raising of Tiresias by Odysseus in Homer, Od. 10.488–540, 11.13–149. For further examples, see Daniel Ogden, ed., Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed. (Oxford; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), 179–205,
E.g., the witch Erictho in Lucan, Pharsalia 6.588–830; the Isis priest Zatchlas in Apuleius, Metam. 2.28–30.
E.g., Acts 12:15; Genesis Rabbah 78.3.
For guardian angels, see Ps 91:11; Jub. 35.16–17; 3 Bar. 11–16; Ps.-Philo 11.12, 15.5; Matt 18:10 (Luke 22:42; Acts 27:23–24); Heb 1:14; Herm. Vis. 5.1–4; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6, 17.157.5. See also Darrell Hannah, “Guardian Angels and Angelic National Patrons in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity,” in Angels: The Concept of Celestial Beings – Origins, Development and Reception, ed. Friedrich V. Reiterer, Tobias Nicklas, and Karin Schöpflin, Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Yearbook 2007 (Berlin; Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2007), 413–436,
See Philo, QE 1, 23; Herm. Mand. 6.2. See also b.Sabb. 119b.
The portrait of Jesus as an exorcist in the Synoptic Gospels is hard to ignore. Multiple specific exorcisms are detailed: the exorcism of an unclean spirit at Capernaum (Mark 1:23–28; Luke 4:33–37), the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1–20; Matt 8:28–34; Luke 8:26–39), the daughter of the Greek/Canaanite woman (Mark 7:24–30; Matt 15:21–28), the boy with an epileptic spirit (Mark 9:14–29; Matt 17:14–20; Luke 9:37–43), the man with a mute demon (Matt 9:32–34), the healing of a blind and mute demoniac (Matt 12:22–23; Luke 11:14–15); Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:2). Summary references to Jesus’s exorcistic activity also appear throughout: Mark 1:32–34, 39; 3:10–12; 6:13; Matt 4:23–24; 8:16; 10:1, 8, 25; 11:4–5; 12:27–28; and Luke 4:40–41; 6:17–18; 7:21; 13:32. His reputation as an exorcist is also evident in other traditions such as: Matt 12:28, Luke 11:20; Matt 9:32–34, 10:25, 12:22–32, Mark 3:22–27, Luke 11:14–23; Mark 9:38–39, Luke 9:49. For the exorcisms of the disciples, see Matt 10:1, 8; Mark 3:15; 6:7, 13; Luke 9:1.
See Origen, Cels. 1.68.
Origen, Cels. 2.60.
For an exposé of magical tricks in the Roman empire, see Anon. Haer. 4.28–42; M. David Litwa, ed., Refutation of All Heresies, WGRW 40 (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2016), 139–161; Justin J. Meggitt, “Did Magic Matter? The Saliency of Magic in the Early Roman Empire,” Journal of Ancient History 1, no. 2 (2013): 208–210,
E. Margaret Howe, “… But Some Doubted, Matt 28:17: A Re-Appraisal of Factors Influencing the Easter Faith of the Early Christian Community,” JETS 18, no. 3 (1975): 173,
Epiphanius, Pan. 28.6.6.
E.g., Carlo Ginzburg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It,” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 1 (1993): 24,
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