From a BSA post on 4/12/2025.
Did Mark’s and Luke’s resurrection accounts intentionally contradict Paul?
Many people have been puzzled by Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 (emphasis added):
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
This brief account brings up a ton of questions. [list formatting is by this web guy]
- Which scriptures does Paul refer to that predict that Jesus would die for our sins and be raised on the third day?
- Why is Cephas named separately from the twelve?
- Are the “apostles” different from the “twelve” in Paul’s mind? Does “twelve” mean that Paul doesn’t know about a Judas tradition?
- Does Paul know of a post-resurrection appearance to James[1] that is otherwise unattested?
- Is Paul implying all of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances were of the same kind as his own (visionary)?
- But most of all, why does Paul’s list differ so markedly from what we read in the gospels?
- Where’s Mary Magdalene?
- Where are the women at the tomb?
- Who were the 500 who saw Jesus before the apostles?
But I think we should ask these last few questions a different way. Not “Why is Paul’s account different from the gospels”, but “Why are the gospel accounts different from Paul’s?” After all, Paul’s account is much earlier. Further, Paul had personally met some of the people he mentions (Peter and James), unlike the gospel writers. We tend to give the gospels priority because their accounts are more detailed and come first in our Bibles, but really, that’s backwards. If you think (as I do) that the gospel writers were familiar with Paul’s teachings, then one has to ask: Did these authors intentionally contradict Paul? And if so, why?
Famously, Mark doesn’t include any resurrection appearances, but it does give some important information. He depicts an empty tomb, and I believe all subsequent descriptions of the empty tomb derive from Mark’s account. It’s obvious to me that this account is Mark’s narrative creation and does not have a historical core.[2] If that’s correct, did Mark get the idea that Jesus was “buried” from Paul?[3] I think it’s likely. If so, it’s odd that he has the angel tell the frightened women that Jesus would appear to “his disciples and Peter”, but not to anyone else. Pointedly there are no mentions of James or the 500.
There’s even more evidence that Luke knew Paul’s letters.[4] Luke clearly expands and corrects Mark’s empty tomb story, making it explicit that the women told the disciples. But the first resurrection appearance is to someone named Cleopas and his unnamed companion (although, oddly, his disciples claim that Jesus had already appeared to Simon when they are told). Then Jesus appears to his disciples, which we would expect from Mark and Paul’s version. But he doesn’t then appear to James, nor to any group of 500. Luke explicitly says that Jesus ascended directly into heaven immediately afterwards. It’s almost as if Luke wants to make sure James and the 500 are written out of the story.
So what’s going on? I believe Mark and Luke both knew of traditions that Jesus had appeared to James, and that he had appeared to many others, and they intentionally omitted them because they were opposed to them. I’ll explain.
Mark and Luke’s omission of James fits in with their general pattern. Mark describes James and the rest of Jesus’ family in a distinctly negative light. (Jesus’ family says he is out of his mind, and Jesus explicitly rejects them as his true family.) Luke’s gospel doesn’t mention James at all, and only mentions Mary in the birth narrative. But this isn’t because James was unimportant! Josephus considers him an important leader and speaks highly of him. The Epistle of James would not have been attributed to him if he were not considered an important figure. Early traditions link James to a more Jewish, less Pauline, form of Christianity. I think Paul mentioned James in a respectful light because James was universally seen as a major leader, perhaps the leader, of the Jesus movement. And it makes sense: in 2nd-temple Jewish movements, a leader’s brother often took over after that leader’s death. James’ reputation was such that Paul couldn’t directly condemn James, but still, Paul describes his opponents in Galatia as “certain people from James”. So let’s speculate for a moment. What if, after Galatians were written, the James-Christians and Pauline-Christians were bitter enemies? What if everyone knew Jesus had appeared to James and anointed him, but James claimed things about Jesus that no Pauline Christian could tolerate? In that case, a Pauline Christian like Mark might feel the need to knock James down a peg or two, which he seems to do.[5] And after the destruction of Jerusalem (and the Jerusalem church), with the threat gone, Luke might have felt okay with omitting James from his story entirely.
As for the 500, we can only speculate. But it would make sense to me if, after Paul’s growing reputation in the 40s, many people would come forward claiming that Jesus spoke to them too, that they had seen the risen Jesus even before Paul did, and that they were thus apostles too. Paul calls several people “apostles” who are otherwise unattested, probably for this reason, and he sarcastically calls his opponents “super-apostles”, indicating that the term was starting to be overused even in the 50s. This is a recipe for chaos, where anyone can claim a new message from Jesus at any time, equal in authority to any teaching from Paul or anyone else. By the time Acts was written, the title of “apostle” was explicitly defined to exclude any of these newcomers, including Paul.[6] So maybe there were hundreds of would-be-apostles, a few hundred of which had their Jesus-experience at one time and identified as a group. And perhaps this group, or their disciples, ended up opposing the nascent proto-orthodoxy, claiming, for instance, that Jesus was non-physical, or that opposition to Rome was obligatory for Christians, or that all of us can be “Christs”, or any other plausible teaching that Mark and Luke would both have opposed. One can see why this group would have been written out of the story. (Unless Simon Magus was based on one of them… but I’ve gone far enough out on a speculative limb for one post.)
In summary, if we think the gospel writers knew Paul’s teachings (as Mendez and Goodacre and Walsh maintain), and if we take that seriously, many possible insights about the early Christian movement open up to us. Not just by what the gospels say, but by what they don’t say as well.
[1] Paul is here referring to Jesus’ brother, not the disciple of the same name. All mentions of “James” in this post refer to Jesus’ brother, the so-called “James the Just”.
[2] I know that some critical scholars, like James Tabor, disagree. But for now, let’s go with the conclusion of Ehrman and Borg and Crossan and Funk and Goulder and Spong and Martin and Mack and Yarboro-Collins and Walsh, ad nauseum, that there was no tomb. (Note how creatively different all the “empty tomb” stories are, and how Mark has no witnesses who could be plausible sources of information, etc.)
[3] Crucifixion victims were not usually buried, unless it was a mass grave. There were exceptions, but these were usually higher-class people or those who had the support of the local elites, neither of which applies to Jesus. Adele Yarboro-Collins posits an earliest layer of tradition that thought Jesus ascended into heaven directly from the cross.
[4] Fitzmyer would disagree, and Fitzmyer was one of the greats. But more recent Acts scholarship has convinced me that there’s no way Luke was ignorant of Paul’s letters. Luke just disagreed with them in several key points.
[5] Paul and Peter seem to have had their disagreements as well, and though Mark’s gospel gives Peter the respect due an apostle, the account is still quite mixed. Peter is consistently portrayed as rather dim, incorrect in his understanding of Jesus, and fickle in his faith. This is probably for a similar reason to Mark’s portrayal of James, though less acute.
[6] This contradicts Paul’s emphatic claim to be an apostle, as many have noted.
—-End of post by Michael L Waddell—-
