I just finished reading James Crossley’s post, which is a response to N.T. Wright, which itself was a response to Crossley (I think I’m getting that right).  I always enjoy reading Crossley’s stuff even if I disagree.  I started writing a comment to his post, but it was getting long so I decided to just blog it here.

Here are my few comments:
(1) I find when I read this type of discussion written by Crossley one thing jumps out at me — James assumes (I think) that 16:8 is the ending of Mark.   Lots of scholars do not think that is the case, myself included, and in my view it weakens his argument of “increased additions/editing” of the resurrection story.  If Mark’s original ending was longer and only now exists, perhaps, in Matthew’s or Luke’s gospel, then the amount of “additions over time” decreases.

(2) Crossley seems to really like to harp on the quote “things are so strange they just may have happened” by Wright in reference to Matt 27:52ff.  (he mentioned it in his paper at SBL–I remember because it got a laugh from the audience).  I remember listening to a debate between William Lane Craig and Hector Avalaos and Avalaos kept bringing it up as well.  This seems to me to be a secondary issue that unfortunately gets brought into the debate surrounding the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection narrative. These verses are not part of the resurrection narrative, but of the crucifixion narrative. Now of course it is related because it is talking about resurrection, but I don’t think it belongs in the discussion of the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection narratives.
Further to this, I would add that we shouldn’t just cherrypick Matt 27:52-53 out- it goes along with the torn veil verse preceding it which is also supernatural.  And a recent work by Dan Gurtner argues that “the rending of the veil is an apocalyptic assertion like the opening of heaven revealing, in part, end-time images drawn from Ezekiel 37. Moreover, when the veil is torn Matthew depicts the cessation of its function, articulating the atoning role of Christ’s death which gives access to God not simply in the sense of entering the Holy of Holies (as in Hebrews), but in trademark Matthean Emmanuel Christology” (read description here).  This section is highly symbolic and I’m not sure we should be reading it literally.  Those verses are also more than a little awkward and may well be a later scribal edition.

(3) Finally, being in the midst of reading Bauckham’s new book it has definitely caused me to think the whole “adding to the tradition” model that Crossley is advocating.  IF Bauckham is correct, then the reason we have some additional parts to the resurrection narratives is because of different testimony’s from different eyewitnesses collected by the different authors (i.e. John has the Thomas declarion  because John was able to verify it with an eyewitness, etc).  What does Crossley make of this, I wonder?

TTFN