3 El Delito de Lavado de Activos
5.3. Problemas encontrados en la aplicación del Código Procesal Penal
It is inevitable that the question “what actually happened?” be asked of the Christian Easter proclamation that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead and that his body was no longer in the place where those who had slain him had laid it (see Mark 16:6). Paul’s words to the Corinthians, written about AD 54, have remained true for Christians across almost two thousand years:
Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preach- ing is in vain and your faith is in vain. (1 Cor 15:12–14)
There is ample proof, even from non-Christian sources, that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.4The Christians believed that his death and
burial were not the end, even if that meant ridicule from the world around them (see 1 Cor 1:22–25). They told stories in their preaching
to affirm the fact that he had been raised. By means of these stories they instructed and encouraged later generations with the message of what the resurrection meant to them. Notice that Paul states that Christ is
preachedas raised from the dead (15:12). Already in the first decades of the existence of Christian communities the “preachers” told the story of the resurrection of Jesus. Indeed, writing to the Corinthian community in AD 54, Paul tells its members that he is passing on to them what he had received from those who went before him (15:1–2). From the very beginnings the resurrection accounts have been part of the Church’s “proclamation.” They were never an attempt to found the Church upon scientifically controlled historical data. Those questions belong to our era.
As with all the Jesus stories in the four Gospels, the resurrection narratives show the usual signs of the creative presence of later writing, reading, and listening communities. This creativity was generated by the different uses of sources, literary skills, pastoral needs, as well as the situation of each community for which the story was originally written.5
The preaching of God’s saving intervention into the life and death of Jesus by raising him from the dead was probably first put into writing in about AD 54 by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Confessional formulas based upon Jesus’ death and resurrection can be found in various forms across very early traditions in the New Testament.6
The Gospel of Mark, the first to tell the story of the third day, the empty tomb, the presence of the young man, the Easter proclamation, and the commission to go to Galilee to see the risen Jesus, as he had promised, appeared about AD 70. To the best of our knowledge, it was not until the Gospel of Mark appeared that a coherent “story” was told of the resurrection of Jesus and the events that accompanied and followed it. It is more than likely that there were earlier storytelling traditions of this crucial event for the Christian communities, but we have no evidence of them.7The first part
of this final chapter reflects upon what we can establish from the gospel resurrection narratives about what actually happened. Only then can we close our study of the resurrection of the Messiah, asking what the Gospels tell us the about the meaning of the resurrection for the foun- dational belief and experience of Christianity—and for subsequent Christian belief and experience.
A comparative study of the four Gospels shows that the following elements form the core of each gospel story, no matter how differently
they were shaped in the fourfold storytelling traditions of the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John:
1. On the third day women (in John only one woman: Mary Magdalene) discovered an empty tomb.
2. A young man (Mark), an angel (Matthew [John: two angels]), or two men (Luke) at the tomb proclaimed to the women (in Mark, Matthew, and Luke) that Jesus had been raised by God.
3. The risen Jesus appeared to a number of people. This ele- ment is missing in Mark, but the tradition is presupposed by the instruction given to the women in Mark 16:7 that they are to tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus is going ahead of them into Galilee, where they will see him. 4. The risen Jesus commissions the disciples for their future
task, in different ways promising that he (Matthew and John 21 [?]) or his Spirit (Luke and John [the Paraclete]) will be with them always.
From this list of elements that are common to all the Gospels, there is only one that can be subjected to objective historical investiga- tion: an empty tomb.
There are no documented incidences of the resurrection from the tomb of a person who was certainly dead.8There are no scientifically
controllable criteria to judge with absolute certainty what was said to the women at the tomb in the Easter proclamations. These proclama- tions differ markedly from Gospel to Gospel. Mark (16:6–7) and Matthew (28:6–7) are very similar, although not identical, but Luke (24:5–6) and John (20:17, 21–23; 21:15–17) are unique. These irrecon- cilable differences put them outside certain historical reconstruction. The same must be said for the various appearances of Jesus. He appears to the women in Matthew (28:8–10), to Mary Magdalene in John (20:11–18), to the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke (24:13–35), to the disciples gathered in Jerusalem in Luke (24:36–48) and John (20:19–23), to the disciples before his ascension at Bethany in Luke (24:50–53). The final commissions also differ radically across the four traditions and are clearly determined by the missionary situations of
Matthew (28:16–20) and Luke (24:44–48), and by the intracommunity needs of John (20:19–23; 21:1–25). We can decide to believe that the witness of the early Church about the Easter proclamation, the various appearances, and the commissions are true, but we cannot provethat they are true in a scientific and objective fashion.9
We return to the appearances and the commission below, but it might be possible to trace solid evidence that one fact was not be shaped by the storytellers: Jesus was crucified and was laid in a tomb. After three days that tomb was found empty (Mark 16:1–5; Matt 28:1–6; Luke 24:1–3; John 20:1–2).
Apart from a few exceptions that never became mainstream, for the greater part of the past two thousand years scholars, preachers, and the Christian faithful did not question the existence of an empty tomb and the historicity of Jesus’ appearances and founding commissioning of the disciples.10Debates around the interpretation of what might have
happened as God raised a dead body, the differences in the reports of appearances, and the various commissions were common. But that they took place in observable history was rarely questioned. This situation changed with the advent of critical scholarship in the middle of the nineteenth century, but the questions were largely marginal to the faith and practice of the Christian Churches. Indeed, they were regarded by most, church leadership and faithful alike, as a dangerous threat to the very existence of Christianity.11
They also tended to arise among scholarly circles in Germany. Mainstream scholarship continued as always, but there was a breach emerging in the wall, and it could be claimed that the radicals in Germany, especially at the University of Tübingen, were the fathers of critical New Testament scholarship.12At
the turn of the century Brook Foss Westcott, one of the great British scholars of the nineteenth century, was able to claim: “If resurrection not be true, the basis of Christian morality, no less than the basis of Christian theology, is gone.”13His historical investigation concludes that
“it is not too much to say that there is no single historic incident better or more variously supported than the Resurrection of Christ.”14 The
strength of these statements is an indication that a growing number of European scholars were claiming the opposite!
As interpreters of the Gospels began to scrutinize the evangelists’ ability to take various pieces of material from traditions that came to them, and to shape other material, using the forms that were common in the literature of that time, the discipline of form criticism emerged.15
For many decades (from the 1920s till the 1950s) the Gospels were seen as the final product of a process that edited received material and cre- ated other stories. Historical research was limited to determining what came to the writer from Jesus himself and what had been determined by the life of the Church. In that scholarly atmosphere an increasing num- ber of scholars suggested that the resurrection accounts, including the story of the empty tomb, had been produced in the life of the early Church. This was not necessarily a denial of resurrection faith. The ear- liest Christians were convinced that the crucified Jesus was alive again and that his presence gave life and a future to the community. But this did not necessarily call for the existence of an empty tomb or histori- cal/physical appearances of Jesus.16
The next wave of scholarly reading of the Gospels accepted the work of the form critics but pointed to the theological agenda that ran across the whole utterance of each Gospel. The evangelists certainly received and used material that was prior to them or that was shaped in the community. But the juxtapositioning of those various elements formed a deliberately constructed theological whole. This methodologi- cal approach, called redaction criticism, did not replace form criticism but developed it into a more theological discipline.17It has been at the
center of gospel studies from the 1950s till the present time. Skepticism about the historicity of the empty tomb is also found among many redaction critics. Contemporary readings of the Gospels focus more and more on the reader and the listener, and fewer questions are asked about the events and the world that formed the Gospels. What is most important to most contemporary interpreters is the impact a narrative makes upon the world in front of the text, reading or hearing the story. Whether the factsof the narrative are true is not a major concern.18
The form critics, the redaction critics, and the exponents of the numerous contemporary literary interpretations of the gospel stories do not (generally) deny the creative and foundational experience of resur- rection faith.19 Paradigmatically, Rudolf Bultmann will not admit that
faith can be based on a historical event, as it must be an act of pure faith accepting the proclamation of God’s saving intervention without human and thus historical support.20For Bultmann, Jesus only rises in
the proclamation of the risen One: “The faith of Easter is just this—faith in the word of preaching.”21 As one of the significant recent scholars
has famously said: “All the evangelists want to show that the activity of Jesus goes on”22[italics mine]. Everyone—those who deny the historic-
ity of the empty tomb, and those who defend it—would agree: the activ- ity of Jesus goes on, despite his apparent defeat on the cross. As far as the earliest Christians were concerned, it is claimed, Jesus was alive, and they did not concern themselves with an empty tomb.
In none of the Gospels is Easter faith generated by an empty tomb. Empty tombs generate fear, wonder, and even flight (Mark 16:8; see also Matt 28:1–5; Luke 24:1–3; John 20:11–17). As is widely known, Charlie Chaplin died on Christmas Day in 1977. He was buried shortly after in the village cemetery at Corsier-sur-Veve, near Lausanne, Switzerland. Two months later his grave was found empty. There was no outcry from Switzerland that the famous Charlie Chaplin had risen from the dead. His body had been stolen, and eventually the perpetrators were found, and the body restored to a more secure grave. The women at the tomb are sent away from the cemetery, as Jesus will not be found among the dead (especially Luke 24:5–6; but also Mark 16:7; Matthew 28:7; John 28:17). Already late in the first century there were stories about disci- ples stealing the body (Matt 28:11–15), or a gardener who had removed it (John 20:14–15). Empty tombs are not “good news”; they are bad news, as someone has tampered with the remains of the beloved one who was placed there. These sentiments lie behind all the gospel accounts of the women’s sad but loving journey to the tomb, heightened in Mark and Luke with the motivation for their visit: they want to anoint his hastily buried body with reverence (Mark 16:1; Luke 23:55–24:1).
This is not the place to rehearse the many theories that have been put forward to explain how an empty tomb story may have come into existence. Dale Allison has surveyed the discussions in a masterly fash- ion.23Only a few recent suggestions will be mentioned here. The only
gospel account that matters is Mark 16:1–8. Matthew and Luke have received the tradition from him. I suspect that there may have also been a pre-Johannine tradition with roots in solid historical memory (the woman at the tomb in John 20:1–2, whose announcement brings Peter to the tomb [vv. 3–8]) that also played into the Synoptic Gospels (for example, Luke 24:12, 24). For some scholars the tradition about an empty tomb existed prior to Mark but did not go back to a historical discovery on “the third day.” It had been born in association with the
practice of Christian visits and liturgies at a tomb. Mark did not invent it, but his narrative is based on a prior non-historical tradition that had religious and theological motivations. For others, Mark invented the story, and from there it passed into all subsequent tradition from his creative storytelling.24
There are more subtle explanations. A recent sug- gestion, accepted by some significant Catholic scholars, looks back to the disciples’ remembrance of Jesus’ presence and teaching during his ministry. He spoke of himself as the Son of Man, and he was understood as the expected eschatological prophet. Within Judaism these figures were expected eventually to be victorious over death. The earliest disci- ples experienced the presence of the living Jesus after his death. They recalled the teaching of the pre-Easter Jesus, regarded him as the escha- tological prophet, and thus insisted that he had been raised from the dead. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus had grown from a seed sown among the disciples before Jesus’ passion and death. In this under- standing, Easter faith is already born in the preaching of the pre-Easter Jesus. The story of the empty tomb became part of that understanding of the living presence of the risen Jesus, fulfilling the expectations that surrounded the eschatological prophet.25
For various reasons it is widely accepted by other scholars that skepticism is warranted. There are many possible causes for an empty tomb. Within the gospel stories themselves one hears hints that some suggested at the time the stories were composed that someone (disciples [see Matt 28:15] or the gardener [see John 20:14–15]) had removed the body. The response to that anti-Christian apologetic is that Jesus was raised from the dead. We are dealing with late-first-century anti- Christian polemic and Christian apologetic that can prove nothing about a physical empty tomb, but these tales suggest that from the beginning some suggestion of “trickery” was present and that bodily resurrection is not the only explanation for an empty tomb.26 There
could be other explanations, coming from religious speculation of the time: apotheosis, or exaltation by God into heaven.27
None of these explanations is found in the texts, despite the bril- liant scholarship that unearths them. An evaluation of the evidence that defends the historicity of an empty tomb remains very strong, and it could be said without fear of contradiction that most Christian schol- ars, from across the many forms of Christianity, adhere to this view.28
nesses knew about a tomb. Although it is an argument from silence, the fact that Paul explicitly states in 1 Corinthians 15:4 that after execution Jesus was buried, and then later describes a series of appearances, sug- gests that an empty tomb tradition was “in the air” before him.29The
story of a death, a tomb, and subsequent appearances was not born with the Gospel of Mark (see 1 Cor 15:3–8).
Fundamental to the Christian story is the unhelpful fact that the empty tomb was found by women. Most likely, the Johannine account of Mary Magdalene at the tomb early on the Sunday morning reflects the oldest tradition.30Within the Jewish world (and indeed elsewhere at
the time), the witness of women was valueless, but the witness of only one woman was even worse. Thus, from a tradition that reported a sin- gle woman finding an empty tomb (John 20:1–2), a more elaborate tra- dition developed, telling of the presence of three women (Mark, Matthew, Luke)—better three witnesses than one!31The further visit to
the tomb by Peter, indicated by John 20:3–8 and perhaps Luke, depend- ing on the authenticity of Luke 24:12 but supported by Luke 24:24, does nothing to alter the original experience of an empty tomb; that discov- ery did nothing for anyone, except to generate amazement, fear, and puzzlement.32The theological reason for this is provided by Luke 24:24,
“but him they did not see.” There can be no sidestepping the fact that the founding narrative of the discovery of an empty tomb in Mark 16:1–8 is extremely low key. As Allison asks: “Why were there no wit- nesses to the resurrection itself? Why were the only witnesses to the empty tomb biased and not so wholly credible? Why were there no spectacular or miraculous demonstrations?” He points out that, when compared with Mark 16:1–8, the other Gospels and the non-canonical Gospel of Peter “are more theological and more apologetically con- scious.”33 The empty tomb of Jesus, like the empty tomb of Charlie
Chaplin, is not “good news.” Precisely because this is the case, it appears likely that there was an empty tomb. Despite subsequent scholarly spec- ulation, and the strong evidence of the interest that Christians showed in the tombs of holy men and women, and especially martyrs, there is little trace of any devotion to the tomb of Jesus.34Is that because it had
become irrelevant (see Luke 24:5: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”)?
To affirm the historicity of an empty tomb does nothing for Easter faith. The earliest Christians did not come to faith because of an empty