(1) It is often asserted that Christianity stands and falls with the veracity of the Resurrection. That is to say, (R) If, as preached in the Gospels, Jesus was raised from the dead the third day after the Crucifixion, Christianity is fully vindicated as the true faith.
(2) I do not want to dispute whether the Resurrection really happened or not - though that is surely an important matter. But I want to explore, whether (R) is really the fundamental claim of Christianity. And it seems to me not - it cannot be.
(3) From a theological point of view, the fundamental claim of
Christianity should be: (M) Jesus is the Messiah as prophesied by the Hebrew prophets.
(4) In certain popular Christian presentation, (M) and (R) are conjoined, and regarded as one and the same claim.
(5) But one can begin to see that (M) and (R) cannot be the same claim by taking a closer look at the concept of Messiah in Judaism. From which one may observe: (a) that it is not completely clear that, certain passages of the Hebrew Bible, if read in context, prophesied the death of Messiah Son of David (for arguably the Hebrew Bible prophesied of two Messiahs, Son of Joseph who would die, and Son of David who would not), let alone resurrection; (b) that certain things were prophesied (as one can infer from the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah) of the Messiah which Jesus did not accomplish, and which even his Resurrection could in no way exempt him from accomplishing.
(6) The claim (b) above might not be straightforward: For one could argue that if Jesus were the Son of God, etc., he could certainly prove his identity in his own way and not in some prophesied way. This argument overlooks the important fact that, if Jesus did not fulfill the Hebrew prophesies, and still claimed to be the Messiah, he would have destroyed the very basis for that claim: For then Judaism would no longer be a true
religion, and, a fortiori, any religion that might plausibly be built upon Jesus's claim to Messiahship.
(7) In other words, Jesus, failing to fulfill the Hebrew prophesies, would, even had he been raised from the dead, only be the manifestation of some unknown supernatural power, but certainly not Yahwah (who, failing to make good his promises to Israel, would have nullified the very religion which claimed to have witnessed him in the first place).
(8) We thus see that the possibility of founding a new religion on Jesus's claim to Messiahship must depend on whether that very claim is, in light of the Hebrew prophesies, valid, and not exclusively, or even predominantly, on whether Jesus had been raised.
(9) To the extent that the Hebrew prophets did not point to a Messiah who must die and be resurrected, the validity of the Christian Faith has actually NOTHING to do with (R).
(10) Accepting the foregoing argument (1) - (9) has this consequence: that, to vindicate the Christian Faith, one must start with Judaism, investigate and present as carefully as possible the Jewish concept and prophesy of the Messiah, and thereafter examine, in light of it, whether Jesus could be said to have fulfilled the criteria.
Yue Tan David Tang
May 31, 2005.
Cambridge, MA