Anglican bishop N.T. Wright is considered by many to be the world’s foremost scholar on the resurrection of Christ. In his recent book, Jesus: the Final Days, he offers four surprising things about the resurrection that make it even more compelling and convincing. Here’s one:
When you read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ last days — of his arrest, his trial, and his crucifixion — you find Old Testament echoes, quotations, and allusions all over the place. The Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel, Zechariah, and other books have provided material that has then been woven into the structure of the narrative.
Turn over the page to the Easter accounts, and what has happened to all that scriptural allusion and echo? It is just not there. John tells us that the two disciples who went to the tomb “did not yet know the Scripture that he must rise again from the dead,” but he does not tell us which Scripture he is talking about.
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These stories, though written down later, actually reflect the very, very early, pre-reflective eyewitness accounts in which people had not even begun to wonder whether or not this strange set of events fulfilled certain Scriptures. They were, it seems, too eager to tell their friends and neighbors and families the extraordinary things they had just seen and heard.
I therefore regard that as one piece of evidence indicating that the stories, though written down later, must go back to very early oral tradition fixed in that form. Once you tell a story like that (and believe me, if you had experienced something like that, you would tell it over and over again), the story would very quickly acquire a fixed form, just as when you repeat an anecdote two or three times, you tend to settle down into one particular way of telling it.
Read about the other three in this excerpt from the book at CT.