Go'd raising Jesus from the dead

In my Post “The Pharisee Paul became the Apostle Paul” I wrote about the narrative of Luke telling of the conversion of Paul in Acts and about the greetings in the Letter to the Romans. For Christians the Gospel of Luke and the Letter to the Romans are part of the Bible or the Sacred Scriptures.

The Bible is a book and the texts in this book are written in different languages. Spoken language is usually realized by speech-acts. I describe the speech-act as the social realization of an interaction of a speaker and at least one listener. It is possible that I speak aloud or in silence to myself, but usually I am speaking to another person. Many texts document or narrate speech-acts. The performance of a speech-act needs at least two persons, one who speaks and at least one other person who listens. The decision to listen to another person in my judgement is as important for a speech-act as the decision of a person to take the word and start speaking. Speaking and listening are the two necessary actions to perform a speech-act.

Many texts tell of speech-acts or narrate speech-acts. The interaction of the reader of a text with the text usually is not called a speech-act. When a text is written there is one person performing, there is the writing author and his social choice to write. The author of a text usually hopes that her or his text will be read and that there is some reaction on the part of the reader. The reader reacts to a text, very rarely a reader interacts with a text. The social realization of reading a text needs a social choice, a free decision to start reading.

The Bible is a text and contains many speech-acts. Writing or reading the Bible usually is not a speech-act because the author realizes no interaction with a reader but hopes that there will be a reaction. At first sight the Bible or any text cannot be considered a speech-act. An interaction results from two free decisions, two social choices. The social realization of a speech-act needs for its realization two social choices by at least two persons. Reading a text is the social choice of the reader. It is a social choice to take the word and start writing. However, the social choice to decide to read the writing comes later. The performance of a speech-act needs at least two social choices from at least two persons whereas speaking and listening must take place at the same time. The author of a text choses between the alternatives to take the word or not to take the word and then takes the word and writes. The reader of the text choses between the alternatives to listen or not to listen and takes the free decision to read.

Sticking to my description of a speech-act as a social realization of the interaction of a speaker and a listener, I observe that usually there is no interaction between author and reader. Very rarely readers have the chance to meet the authors of the books they read. We write letters because in the moment we write we cannot meet the persons directly for some reason. The authors of the books of the Bible are dead, there is no interaction possible any more with them for the readers. Works of fiction or works of science are written for a broad audience and a whole community of scientists. The scientific community debates and discusses the scientific publications and the literary critics write about new works of fiction. It is ok saying that there is a kind of interaction within the scientific community that qualifies being called speech-acts. A speech-act is an interaction of a speaker and a listener.

Writing texts is useful to get clear about one’s arguments and to present a coherent line of argumentation. The readers of my text will have to invest some work to take notice of my arguments, judge their claims to validity and get their own arguments organized for a response. Speech-acts among philosophers, theologians, and a lot of other professionals working with speech-acts easily and regularly stir emotions and the raised voices suddenly disrupt the speech-acts because nobody is listening any more to what the speakers are saying. These kinds of unfortunate speech-acts demonstrate the advantage of the absence of immediate interaction between authors and their readers. Writing and reading realizes incidentally the deceleration of possible incidents of violent interactions. The immediate interactions between speakers and listeners that often risk escalating into emotional disruptions of the calm and peaceful discourse are not possible between authors and their readers. This deceleration does not necessarily guarantee that the writers or readers are paying attention to their dignity. Lamentations, accusations, condemnations or unwanted efforts of rescue for untenable claims to validity that are brought forward may develop devastating and destructive power in oral or written exchanges.

The investigation of speech-acts as social realizations of dignity is complicated (See my Post "Ethics and Discourse Theory"). The validity condition to a claim to validity of a social realization of dignity consists in the social realization of the equality of freedom, liberty and rights of all women, men and queer involved in the speech-act. Securing one’s dignity as a reader of a text is easier because I can take my time to write an answer, to react and respond. There is much time to realize my dignity if there is freedom to write and equal rights for authors.

It is interesting to investigate the case where a text of an author is the reaction to an existing text of another author. Investigating the texts of the Bible we find quite often that the texts are reactions to existing texts within the Bible as reactions to non-Biblical texts. The Biblical scholars cannot say when the final editing of the fifth book of Moses that is Deuteronomy took place. Generally, this editing is supposed to have happened in between the fifth and the first century BCE. Deuteronomy is a rewriting of the first four books of Moses. Deuteronomy is an answer and reaction to books that had been written centuries before. Deuteronomy is an example of a kind of interaction between texts of different authors of the Torah and an author who rewrites the texts and thus creates a new text. This shows that texts are not only realizations of the social choice of an author to start writing a text. Texts often realize social choices of answering or reacting to a text. Is it possible to say that the reader who reacts to a text that he had read is interacting with the read text? I think it is possible to rightly affirm the question. It is not right to qualify this interaction as a speech-act. Authors were readers, and readers began to write. Deuteronomy has been included into the Torah. The Israelites or the Jews accepted the rewriting of the first books of Moses as another book of the Torah.

There was another kind of rewriting the Torah that was not any more accepted by the Israelites or Jews. The authors of these new texts called themselves Christians and they considered their interpretations of the Hebrew Bible as a New Testament. For almost two thousand years, the authorities of the Catholic Church had difficulty to accept the plurality of different interpretations of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament by Jews and Christians as legitimate. The interpretations of the Hebrew Bible by the Jews ensured their religious and cultural identity and constituted the realization of their dignity.

The Roman Catholic Christians were not giving respectful attention to the permanent quality of the Hebrew Bible for salvation of Jews and Christians until recently. In 1965, Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council, finally affirms that the Old Testament – that is the Hebrew Bible - was “written under divine inspiration” and remains “permanently valuable” (Dei Verbum, number 14). Dei Verbum uses the present tense when speaking of the revealing Old Testament and accepts “the key feature of Judaism” that is the belief that the Hebrew Bible “constitutes revealed scripture” (Brettler, Marc Zvi. 2015. “The Hebrew Bible and the Early History of Israel.” In The Cambridge Guide to Jewish History, Religion, and Culture, edited by Judith R. Baskin and Kenneth Seeskin, 6–33. 6. Comprehensive Surveys of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511780899.003). Dei Verbum number 15 continues in the present tense and claims: “Now the books of the Old Testament … reveal to all men the knowledge of God and of man and the ways in which God, just and merciful, deals with them”. These books “contain a store of sublime teachings about God, sound wisdom about human life, and a wonderful treasury of prayers, and in them the mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way. Christians should receive them with reverence” (Dei Verbum 15).

The Hebrew Bible had been written over a one-thousand-year period (Brettler 2015, 6). The Hebrew Bible – the word Bible in Greek means book – is “an anthology, a collection of collections of collections” (ibid.: 7). The Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, is written in Hebrew and Aramaic and is structured in three sections that are Torah (the Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings that is Psalms, Proverbs and Job) (ibid.). Catholic and Orthodox Christians also consider Jewish Hellenistic works (Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus/Ben Sira and Baruch) canonical that is authoritative. For the Jews these works are Apocrypha, and they refer to a Tanakh that includes them as Old Testament. The Old Testament of Protestant Christians is largely equivalent to the Hebrew Bible in content but not in structure. The Bible of the Christians also contains the New Testament that was written in Greek (ibid.: 11). The authors of the New Testament were Jews who had become Christians. They used the pieces of oral or written traditions telling of Jesus Christ that already existed in their communities and made extensive use of the Old Testament claiming the freedom for a completely new interpretation. The Jews who developed these interpretations had become Christians.

The Jewish scholars of the Hebrew Bible, the Rabbis, especially study the Torah. They prayed, meditated, discussed, and wrote comments on the Torah, the constitution of Israel that was written under divine inspiration. Rabbis would discuss, comment, and write on theological themes like reconciliation, forgiveness of sins and new life, redemption, atonement, justification, salvation, and new creation. These themes were and are of central importance for the belief system and worldview of Christians too. Christians believe in Jesus Christ as the Lord that is as the anointed one (in Hebrew: messiah; in Greek: christós). To believe in Jesus Christ as the Lord is impossible for a Jew. In 539 BC, the ruler of Persia, Cyrus, conquered Babylon, allowed the Israelites to return to Jerusalem and to construct a new temple to YHWH; no wonder that the exiled Israelites “saw him as a redeemer empowered by God” (Segal, Alan F. 2015. “The Second Temple Period.” In The Cambridge Guide to Jewish History, Religion, and Culture, edited by Judith R. Baskin and Kenneth Seeskin, 34–57. 34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511780899.004). Segal affirms that the so-called Deutero-Isaiah called Cyrus the anointed one that is “the Messiah” (ibid.). Indeed, we read in Isaiah 45, 1-2:

“Thus says Yahweh to his anointed one, to Cyrus whom, he says, I have grasped by his right hand, to make the nations bow before him and to disarm kings, to open gateways before him so that their gates be closed no more: I myself shall go before you, I shall level the heights, I shall shatter the bronze gateways, I shall smash the iron bars” (New Jerusalem Bible).

Marc Zvi Brettler is critical of calling Cyrus the anointed one, the messiah. He interprets Isaiah 53, 3 – that is in the Fourth song of the servant (New Jerusalem Bible) - as the affirmation that “Israel had suffered enough, and an unnamed servant has suffered vicariously for Israel as a whole” (Brettler 2015, 32).

Isaiah 53, 5:

“Whereas he was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on him, and we have been healed by his bruises” (New Jerusalem Bible).

Brettler holds that the chapters 40 and following of Isaiah are an exile writing that ignores “Davidic messianism and insists that YHWH will be the nation’s only king” and cites as his authority from the Second song of the servant Isaiah 49, 14-16 (Brettler 2015, 32):

“Zion says, ‘The LORD has forsaken me, My Lord has forgotten me.’ Can a woman forget her baby, Or disown the child of her womb? Though she might forget, I never could forget you. See, I have engraved you On the pals of My hands, Your walls are ever before Me” (ibid.).

Segal insists on the importance of the coming of the Messiah for apocalyptic Jewish literature during the Second Temple. The First Temple had been built in Jerusalem by Salomon and was destroyed in the 6th century BCE by the Babylonians. The Second Temple was built after Babylonian captivity under Persian kings when the exiled Jews returned to Jerusalem. The Second Temple was destroyed during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Segal affirms that in the Jewish apocalyptic and mystical movements “messianism became a central theme”; these movements followed the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and intensified after the failed second Jewish rebellion against Roman rule, that is the Second Jewish War of 132–135 CE or Bar Kokhba Revolt (Segal 2015, 56).

Segal and Brettler are Jewish Biblical scholars. They may differ in their interpretation of the prophets and the Thorah. They would nevertheless agree that neither the songs of the servant in Isaiah nor Jewish apocalyptic literature or the sages who established Rabbinic Judaism pointed at Jesus Christ as the Messiah, as the Lord.

During the Second Temple the Pharisees were one religious and social movement among competing religious movements in Israel and the diaspora. Only the movement of the Pharisees survived the destruction of the Second Temple, and their movement became the basis for Rabbinic Judaism. The Pharisees were very pragmatic on the consequences of the destruction of the Second Temple as the Mishna documents.

Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai calmed the grief of Rabbi Joshua over the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem saying we do not need a Temple for effective atonement, we need actions of loving kindness as it is written: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice (Avot de-Rabbi Natan 6)” (Segal 2015, 56). The Rabbi cites the prophet Hosea 6,6 just as Matthew makes Jesus cite the same verse two times in his Gospel (Matthew 9, 13 and Matthew 12, 7). The Rabbis transformed Judaism from a Temple-centered religion to a tradition of reconciliation between God and Israel based on acts of loving kindness, piety, and humility (Segal 2015, 56). Stanislas Lyonnet (1902 – 1986) is one of the Catholic Biblical scholars who had worked for the turn of Catholic theology to the Bible. He assesses that Christian theologians cannot speak of the concepts of atonement and redemption, forgiveness of sins, of reconciliation and justification without reference to the concept of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Lyonnet, Stanislas. 1989. Etudes sur l`Epitre aux Romains. 22. Roma: Editrice Pontificio Instituto Bíblico).

At the center of the preaching of the first Christians rests the term “resurrection”. Acts gives testimony to the preaching of resurrection by Peter and Paul. We see this testimony in the first speech of Peter at Pentecostal in Jerusalem (Acts 2, 23-40). In the narrative of the cure of a lame man at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3, 13-16), in Peter’s speeches before the Sanhedrin (Acts 4, 10-12 and 5, 30-31), and in Peter’s catechesis for the Centurion Cornelius and his family (Acts 10, 37-43) (ibid.: 28). The term “resurrection” stands at the center of Paul’s speeches in Antioquia and Pisidia (Acts 13, 30-38) and in Athens (Acts 17, 31). Acts 17,3 tells that in Thessalonica Paul spoke about the suffering and resurrection of Christ and he spoke about resurrection in his speech before King Agrippa (Acts 26, 23) (ibid.).

The confession of the resurrection constitutes the center of the Christian faith (Gradl, Hans-Georg. 2015. “Auferstehungstexte im Neuen Testament. Einführung und Überblick.” Zur Debatte. Themen der Katholischen Akademie in Bayern 45 (1): 2–5. 2). We see the confession of the resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament expressed in different writings and genres. Eighteen writings of the 28 writings of the New Testament specifically speak about resurrection (ibid.). Most important are the Easter narratives at the end of the canonical Gospels: Matthew 28, 1-20; Mark 16,1-8; Luke 24, 1-53; John 20, 10-29 and 21, 1-23; then there are the speeches of Acts (Acts 2, 22-24; 3,15; 10,40-43; 13,28-31; 17,31; 26, 23;) (ibid.). Gradl misses Acts 5, 30-31. There is extensive use of the term resurrection in the letters of Paul (Romans 4, 23-25; 1 Corinthians 15,3-8. 14-16; Philippians 2, 6-11; 1 Thessalonians 4, 14;) and the writings that do not particularly speak of the resurrection nevertheless presuppose it and develop the kerygma of Easter in ecclesiological or ethical perspectives (ibid.).

The letters from Paul date from the middle of the first century, the latest testimonies of the resurrection date from the transition of the first to the second century CE. The literary genre of faith- or confession-sentences was probably in use before the writing of the New Testament (ibid.). We find these predications in 1 Thessalonians 1, 10; Galatians 1,1; 1 Corinthians 6, 14; 15, 12; 15, 20; 2 Corinthians 4,14; Romans 4, 24; 6, 4.9; 8, 11 (ibid.). In this oldest tradition of the resurrection acclamation or confession, Go’d is always testified as the active agent (Heininger, Bernhard. 2015. “Die Überlieferungsgeschichte der Osterbekenntnisse.” Zur Debatte. Themen der Katholischen Akademie in Bayern 45 (1): 9–12. 9). Go’d is the subject who raised Jesus from the dead; the use of the faith- or confession expression “Jesus was raised from the dead” is very old and had been used in the first Christian communities in the Thanksgiving prayers of the Eucharist. The use of this confession sentence in the rite of Baptism is important and is followed by prayers of intercession for the baptized and the community (ibid.).

The main theme in the resurrection narrative of the New Testament is the confession of God who has power over life and death, and this power of Go’d is already a main theme in the Torah. In Deuteronomy 32, 39 Yahweh affirms “See now that I, I am he, and beside me there is no other god. It is I who deal death and life; when I have struck, it is I who heal” (New Jerusalem Bible).

The resurrection tradition of the New Testament confesses Go’d who again operates creation by liberating Jesus from death as He had operated creation and liberated Israel from Egypt as Leviticus 19, 9 makes speak Yahweh: “I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt” (ibid.). The first and oldest Christian tradition of confessing the resurrection – see for example the letters of the Apostle Paul - does not speak of the empty tomb. The narrative of the Gospels later develops the condensed kerygma and speaks of the empty tomb (ibid.).

Mark creates the genre of the Gospel (Gnilka, Joachim. 2008. Das Evangelium nach Markus. Mk 1–8,26. Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament 1. 17. Zürich: Benzinger). He used collections of Jesus’ disputations in Galilee and of his parables, a first catechesis and reflections of concrete problems within the Christian communities, and a narrative of Christ’s Passion (ibid.). It is the business of the exegetes and scholars of the New Testament to present hypothesis on the writing and editing process of the Gospel. I wonder how they would verify or falsify their theories. I prefer reading the final texts. Mark writes of Jesus’ death and funeral (Mark 15, 33-41.42-47) and of the women going to the grave (Mark 16,1-8) (Gradl. 2015. 2). Women were assisting the last events of the life of Jesus near the cross on Golgotha: Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James and Salomone and “many other women were there” who “used to follow Jesus” and “who had come up to Jerusalem with him” (Mark 15, 40-41). We are not told by Mark of any male followers or disciples near the cross of Jesus. On Sabbath in the tomb, the three women are testimonies of the message of the resurrection by the angel. Mark takes one verse only to testify the faith in the resurrection of the crucified Jesus: “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified: he has risen, he is not here. See, here is the place where they laid him” (Mark 16,6) and the announcement of the apparition of the resurrected in Galilee (Mark 16,7). The last verse of the Gospel of Mark describes the flight of the women; they are frightened and do not follow the order of the angel to tell the disciples and Peter of the resurrection (Mark 16,8). Later editors of the Gospel completed this abrupt ending with a compilation from other Gospels (Mark 16,9-20) (ibid.).

Matthew 28, 16-20 describes the actual apparition of Jesus to the disciples in Galilee that the angel in Mark had announced (Mark 16, 7). Matthew enlarges the text of Mark according to the needs of the community that is the defense and clarification of the Easter kerygma. He puts the grave under guard (Matthew 27, 62-66) to silence rumors that the body of Jesus got robbed by one of his disciples and makes the High priest responsible for bribing the guards (Matthew 28, 11-15). He also narrates that the women “filled with awe and great joy” announced the disciples the resurrection of Jesus (Matthew 28, 8). Matthew seems to have been a Jewish Christian who had a good command of Greek (Luz, Ulrich. 1985. Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (Mt 1–7). Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament I/1. 62. Zürich: Benzinger). Was he a member of the Christian community in Antiochia, Syria? He seems to have written his Gospel shortly after 80 CE (ibid.: 76). We know that around 100 CE Ignatius of Antioch already made use of the Gospel of Matthew (ibid.: 62). Matthew uses apocalyptic motives (Matthew 28, 2-4). Since he seems to be sure that his readers are familiar with Jewish apocalyptic literature, he seems to write for a Jewish-Christian community (Gradl 2015, 4).

Matthew ends his Gospel with Jesus’ pledge: “I am with you always; yes, to the end of times” (Matthew 28,20). Luke additionally narrates the actual farewell of Jesus, blessing and parting from the disciples: “He withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven” (Luke 24, 50-53 and Acts 1, 9-11). Luke also narrates of the two disciples of Emmaus whom Jesus appeared (Luke 24, 50-53) and of the apparition before all disciples (Luke 24, 36-49). Luke wanted to ward off the impression Jesus was but a ghost and therefore narrates that Jesus shows his hands and feet and eats fish (Luke 24, 39-42). Despite all these body pictures of the resurrected, the picture of Jesus the resurrected stays very vague and leaves room for interpretations (Gradl 2015, 2). Luke narrates that the Holy Spirit will guarantee the lasting affection and attachment to Jesus; Jesus promises his disciples at his farewell “the power from on high” (Luke 24, 49; Acts 1, 4.8) and at Pentecost the Holy Spirit fills and animates the frightened disciples (Acts 2, 3-4) (ibid.). Narrating of the disciples of Emmaus, Luke already aims at the first Christian communities that sit together, eat, and read the Bible as they do in Acts. Studying the Scripture and celebrating the Eucharist is described as a permanent Easter-encounter with Jesus Christ for all times (ibid.: 4).

John narrates very differently from the synoptic Gospels. The words of the crucified Jesus to his mother and to the disciple (John 19, 25-27) and the piercing of Jesus’ side (John 19, 31-34) already develop the narrative of the crucifixion and the burial from an ecclesiological and soteriological perspective. John centers the apparition narratives on individual persons: Mary of Magdalen (John 20, 11-18), the doubting Thomas (John 20, 24-29) and the direct addressing of Peter (John 21, 15-23). For the individual reader it is easier to take the message of the resurrection from an individual experiencing the resurrection (Gradl 2015, 3). John’s community apparently shares the doubts of Thomas, and John tries to empower them by letting them hear the words of Jesus: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20, 29). (ibid.). The disciple whom Jesus loved and who went second into the grave “saw and believed”; and we are not told that the grave was empty (John 20,8). This disciple is also the first who recognizes Jesus at the Lake Tiberias (John 21, 7). This disciple is presented as a model believer; the Gospel of John is based on his testimony (Gradl 2015, 3).

The literary form that is used to narrate the resurrection experience of Easter is called appearance or epiphany (Heininger 2015, 11). Exegetes and theologians describe the relation between the resurrected and the Easter-testimonies using the term “appearance”. The Greek expression is ophtae (from the verb oraein, to see) and translates “he let himself be seen” (ibid.). The expression ophtae is used in Luke 24, 34 when the Eleven told the disciples of Emmaus: ”The Lord has indeed risen and has appeared to Simon”. In Acts 13, 31 Jesus let himself be seen by his disciples. In 1 Corinthians 15,5 Jesus lets himself be seen by Peter and the Twelve, in 1 Corinthians 15, 6 by 500 brethren, in 1 Corinthians 15, 7 to James and all the apostles and in 1 Corinthians 15, 8 last but not least to Paul. In Matthew 17, 3 and Mark 9, 4 Peter, Moses and Elija make themselves be seen to James and to his brother John talking to Jesus at the mountain.

The same verb oraein is used in the indicative perfect active first person plural (eorákamen) in John 20,25 by the disciples telling Thomas “We have seen the Lord”. The noun orama - vision - is used in Acts 16, 9 for the vision of Paul that tells him to come to Macedonia.

The expression ophtae is also used in Luke 1, 11 where an angel lets himself be seen by Zecharia and in Luke 22, 43 an angel from heaven lets himself be seen to give strength to Jesus.

The Hebrew Bible uses the expression ophtae for narrating a theophany: Jahwe or his angel make themselves be seen before Abraham, Isaak, Jacob, Moses (Genesis 12,7; 17,1; 18,1; Exodus 3,2) and before the wife of Manoah, the future mother of Samson (Judges 13,3). The glory of Yahweh lets itself be seen in the cloud for the whole community (Exodus 16,10) and the glory of Yahweh lets itself be seen for the entire people (Leviticus 9, 23). The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, in all of these occasions uses ophtae (ibid.).

Stephen is familiar with the Torah and started his defense speech before the high priest and the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem referring to Genesis and Go’d’s appearance to Abraham (Acts 7, 2) and in Acts 7,30 he refers to the theophany on Mount Sinai using ophtae.

The New Testament narrates many visions of the resurrected Jesus. The experience of that Christ is risen is testified by women (Matthew 28, 9-10 and John 20, 11-18) and by men (Matthew 28, 16-20; Luke 24, 13-33. 36-49; John 20, 19-29; 1 Corinthians 15,5-8) (Gradl, Hans-Georg. 2015. “Visionen – war alles nur Einbildung?” Zur Debatte. Themen der Katholischen Akademie in Bayern 45 (1): 18–19. 18).

It must be clear that the vision narrative serves to express a theological meaning and not the biological process of eyes and brain to produce pictures of objects. The visions and confession-sentences of the resurrection of Jesus show what they want to say, namely the confession that Christ is risen (Luke 24, 34). The “how” of the Easter-experience cannot be answered by the sources and texts in a concrete way (ibid.). Although the testimony of the Easter-experience is multiform, it is a sustaining experience with lasting, existential effects on the life of the disciples (ibid.). The narrative of the visions also shows what that experience was not like: it was not a fantasy, not an illusion or pure imagination, no projection, no miraculous materialization (ibid.: 19). The Easter-experience sets in motion a movement: Paul gets Peter moving and all disciples get moving in their own ways. All this gives testimony to the authenticity and reliability of the impulse that is described as a vision (ibid.).

The powerful effects of the visions point at some extraordinary experience. Suddenly and unexpectedly, there is an experience that the Lord is risen and is experienced as living (ibid.: 18). This experience happens to persons that become witnesses that the experience of the resurrection is given. Theology interprets this happening as a gift. Giving testimony to the resurrection may be described as the social choice to accept this gift of the experience that the Lord is risen and expressing this social choice with the help of the faith- and confession-sentences.