As has been stated in the introduction, the subject of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is so vast that the literature available is just inexhaustible. Be that as it may, the following conclusions can be distilled from the present study: The traditional/confessional interpretive methods that a priori consider the resurrection narratives in the Gospels and in the first letter to the Corinthians to be historical facts in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, can no longer be tenable given what we know now from a critical analysis of the resurrection corpus. The historical-critical methods of reading the Bible have also been determined to be not only an exercise in speculation but also an exercise in futility. By and large, historical-critical interpretation brands the resurrection narratives to be hallucinations and a figment of the apostles’ imagination. While this is a possibility, we cannot go back in time to the first century to examine the psychological state of the visionaries. A historical-critical interpretation that is based on the western scientific world view ineluctably reaches a conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth was not raised from the dead and could not have been raised given the scientific world-view into which we are socialised about the natural laws and the ontology of the human body. Nevertheless, as exposure to other worldviews reveals, there is more to reality than what can be apprehended by the senses.
Consequently, we have established that socio-scientific historiography is the best option but as has been pointed out, there are two main orientations to the socio-scientific interpretive methods. The main strand is the one represented by Pieter Craffert which ends at acknowledging that post-resurrection sightings as real to the observers involved. However, the fact that this version of socio-scientific interpretation shies away from examining the actual contents of contemporary altered states of consciousness makes it inadequate especially where implications to contemporary South African Christian praxis is concerned. This is why the inclination of the present study is towards John Pilch’s socio-scientific methodology. Having established that all human beings are the same in terms of their biological and neurological make up, Pilch goes on to prescribe methods in which the researcher can psychologically position him/herself in order to experience altered states of consciousness.
The criticism levelled against John Pilch by Peiter Craffert would seem unfair. It would seem as if at first Craffert is right to criticize Pilch for being too absolute about his conclusions. We may remember the words of Theissen and Merz in their foreword that “scholars do not say, ‘That’s what it was’, but it could have been like that on the basis of the sources”. (Theissen and Merz 1998: Foreword). Smith also, is of the view that few professionals would regard any event of the past, especially the distant past as ‘historically secure’ (Smith 2019: 57). Therefore, it should be enough to prove a case on a preponderance of probability. As has been shown from the foregoing, it is increasingly becoming apparent that there is more to reality than what meets the eye and contemporary studies on out of body experiences and near-death experiences give us a window into the contents of these phenomena.
What has been the biggest problem with researchers such as Pieter Craffert is their exclusive reliance on secondary information or primary researches done by others. This is indeed surprising given that socio-scientific criticism claims to appropriate social-science methodology and one stock in trade method is participant observation of contemporary phenomena similar to those depicted in ancient Mediterranean. Notwithstanding the richness of South Africa in terms of cultural phenomena resembling first-century scenarios, participant observation of those belief communities is conspicuous by its absence in South African New Testament scholarship. The African Traditional Religions and Pentecostal/Charismatic communities some of whom have claimed the ability to raise people from the dead, abound with phenomena that mimic biblical social systems. These should therefore be studied ethnographically so as to compare their practices with New Testament phenomenon. Craffert is right when he points out that scholars of Judaism and Christianity are not the only ones encountering heavenly journeys in their texts. Craffert goes on to assert that the phenomenon of ‘soul flights’ is such a widespread phenomenon in religious and cultural traditions that it can almost be seen as a human universal (Craffert 2015:386).
Again, the area of philosophy of religion concerning the human makeup needs to be considered so that scholars disabuse themselves of the notion that a human being is exclusively a function of biology. Craffert does not differ with those who assert that the resurrected visions were hallucinations although he does not say this explicitly. Craffert hides behind the assertion that these are neurocultural phenomena or imaginal experiences without corresponding outside reality. The implication is not different from the ones who
have said that visions of the resurrected Christ were hallucinations. The only thing that he avoids is the implication that resurrection visions were pathological.
The response that conservative scholars give for the absence of resurrection or after-life in the Bible is that biblical revelation is progressive. They point to the understanding of the concept of the Messiah and his kingdom as one example of the progression of the revelation from a mundane conception to the spiritual understanding of the kingdom of God. For instance concerning the evolution of the Messianic concept, Nortje-Meyer chairperson of the Department of Religion Studies at the University of Johannesburg contends that “on the basis of our investigation we think that what we find in the gospels is a new expression with new content of the Messiahship as it is brought into relation with Jesus and identified with him” (Nortje-Meyer 2005: 130). The implication is that New Testament scholars in South Africa should remain open to new ideas and methods that help us better understand resurrection narratives. Du Rand is of the opinion that the miracle narratives in the Bible should no longer be rationalised to fit positivistic natural explanations. The result is that miracle narratives are taken seriously, taking belief in an omnipresent, transcendent God, to emphasize that God is capable of doing anything, nature notwithstanding, including the debated resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth (Du Rand 2005: 148).
The biblical interpreter has to see interpretive work as part of a much larger system of thought, in the sense of a philosophical basis. We should take notice of philosophical hermeneutics, but also have to evaluate systems guiding world views. This means that postmodern interpreters will need to be more broadly prepared in linguistics and philosophy. In postmodern interpretation, we also have to discuss hermeneutical theory global and multicultural issues at stake. We are faced in the postmodern period with large issues, posed by greater contact with a divergence of cultures in our world. Our increased contact with such a variety in God’s world has shown that there are actually different perceptions of reality. Different people will look at truth from varying perspectives. A fully postmodern interpretation will need to be fully global and fully multicultural (Du Rand 2005: 148-228).
We can no longer ignore the fact of our multireligious context in South Africa (Coetzee 2005: 100). Therefore, the historical method should include a public and conscious investigation of the historian’s own ultimate presuppositions as well as those of the subjects. Furthermore,
from a critical realist perspective, it is accepted that there also exists a reality totally independent from any human representations: “Indeed, the potential to shift, voluntarily or involuntarily between different states of consciousness is a function of the universal human nervous system” (Pilch 2004: 30).
What is sad about the South African religious environment is that many Pentecostal church leaders have been accused of stealing from the poor through a number of gimmicks. They have claimed that they alone can broker blessings from God to the hapless mortals. While the concept of ‘holy man’ has its basis in the Bible, what these ‘holy men’ are not putting concomitant emphasis on is the fact that every human body is ‘hard wired’ for alternate states of consciousness. No one has a monopoly over an audience with divinity. It is possible to intentionally induce trance experience. Common strategies include listening to music, fasting and prayer among other techniques. We have seen our fair share of the bizarre in South African Pentecostal Christianity. The mistake, however, that our commentators and analysts make is to judge those phenomena against norms of rationality. Pilch argues that though these phenomena are not ‘irrational’, they are nevertheless ‘nonrational’, meaning that rationality is not the metric against which to judge these experiences (Pilch 2004: 19).
Further research social-scientific research needs to be done in the area of the strange and bizarre. More participant observation needs to be within contemporary communities whose practices mirror the scenarios of the New Testament. That way, we are able to reconstruct the social milieu that obtained in the New Testament.
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