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The creative source of Christianity was the faith in the risen and glorified Jesus. How did this faith arise? How did there come into being a consciousness of a new object of religious devotion, i.e. Jesus, who had triumphed over death and had become the Christ on the right hand of God?

The death of Jesus on the cross seemed to make definite shipwreck of all the expectations which he had planted in the hearts of his disciples. Soon, however, these hopes were destined to be recreated, enriched with greater assurance than ever before, and founded on the certitude that the master had won a definite victory over death. The church expressed and defended this faith in a cycle of stories which stretch from the death of Jesus to his ascension. The relationship between the faith and the stories is not quite so simple as has been traditionally thought. The stories not only provide the foundation for the faith; they express it and at the same time defend it.

The facts are not unimportant. But even if they could be stated and defined with greater accuracy than is possible, they would not in themselves explain the creation of the faith. If nothing had happened except that the disciples had been the victims of an illusion and had persuaded themselves that their master had returned to life, the appearance of a new religion founded on faith in the resurrection would be capable of explanation. If some document were discovered and established beyond all possibility of dispute that the body of Jesus slowly decomposed in the grave where it had been laid, Christianity with all the gifts of spiritual life which it has given to mankind would not be destroyed. On the other hand, if it were possible to prove that on the morning of the third day the body of Jesus was no longer in the tomb and every possibility of fraud had been excluded, it would not follow that those who were forced to admit this fact would on that account become Christians. A fact means nothing without some interpretation put upon it.

The purpose of studying the stories of the resurrection must be to extract the factual elements on which the faith depended, to outline the character of this faith, and to describe the psychological process which created it.

When Jesus had to allow the possibility of his death to intrude upon his visions of the future, he did not think of it as a check to his work but considered that God would cause him to return on the clouds of heaven as the glorious Messiah. He did not foresee a renewal and continuation of his work on the level of this world's economy but its extension in the realized kingdom of God.

Two traditions concerning the burial of Jesus must be distinguished. One refers to what can be called the ritual burial. It would have taken place not to perform a last act of respect to the crucified but solely to avoid transgressing the commandment of Deuteronomy (xxi. 23) which forbids one allowing the sun to rest on the corpse of a criminal. 1 Those who, according to this tradition, buried Jesus were only concerned that his body should not remain exposed and so had no other reason for marking with accuracy the place where they laid it. The other tradition refers to what may be called the honorable burial. It was done in an honorable way in a tomb which could be found again. This tradition alone is portrayed in the stories but there survive distinct traces of the other tradition. In the gospel of Peter (3-5) Herod declares that, if Joseph of Arimathea had not asked for the body of Jesus, the Jews would have buried him to prevent the violation of the precepts of Deuteronomy. . .

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