(Note: all Italicized portions below are preserved from the original. Bolded lines are my own emphasis.)
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It is sometimes claimed in contemporary Christian thought that only the stupendous miracles of empty tomb and risen apparition(s) can explain historically, first, how the companions of Jesus recovered their faith in him lost at the crucifixion, and, second, how others came to faith in him despite his crucifixion. There are two problems, one minor and one major, with that oversimplified understanding.
First, it was the male and not the female companions of Jesus who fled, since they were much more likely to be arrested along with Jesus. But to lose your nerve is not to lose your faith. Even Mark's story of Peter's triple denial so formulates it that he loses not his faith but, as it were, his memory. It might have been braver to stay and confess, but it was cowardice and not disbelief to deny and run.
Second, we are retrojecting our own post-Enlightenment rationalism into a pre-Enlightenment world. Imagine a contemporary debate along these lines. Nonbeliever: "All those stories about virginal conceptions, divine births, miraculous events, wondrous deeds, risen apparitions, and heavenly ascensions never did and never could have happened. They are myth at best and lie at worst." Believer: It is true that such events do not happen regularly, but they all happened to our Jesus once and for all, long ago." In that post-Enlightenment contradiction, impossibility battles with uniqueness.
Both those positions, however, are equally irrelevant for a pre-Enlightenment world, equally unusable in such a cultural milieu. In a world where anything from divine birth to divine ascension was a possible part of the transcendental landscape, impossibility was not an available argument for polemical attackers, but neither was uniqueness an available argument for apologetical defenders. In the free market of religious ideas that was the Greco-Roman world, one had to enter the spiritual free-trade area and argue for one's God or one's Son of God without using either of those post-Enlightenment moves.
For example, in the middle of the second century Justin is arguing for Jesus in his First Apology directed toward pagan readers. He never suggests uniqueness. "When we say also that the Word," he begins, "who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, an that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter." He then lists many examples and concludes by referring to divine emperors and especially Julius Caesar. "What of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce someone who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre?" Finally, however, Justin is certainly not ready to say that all such claims are equal. But notice that his criterion of discrimination is not uniqueness in event, but superiority in action. "As we promised in the preceding part of this discourse, we will now prove Him superior-or rather have proved Him to be so-for the superior is revealed by His actions" (21-22). That is an utterly appropriate pre-Enlightenment argument. Of course there have been many sons of God around, but Jesus is best of all because of certain specific arguments.
Similarly, about a quarter of a century later, when a pagan polemicist named Celsus is attacking Christianity, he uses exactly the same pre-Enlighenment type of argument. He never mentions impossibility, but counters, that Jesus has never done anything for anyone. The argument for superiority is met by one for inferiority. "After all, the old myths of the Greeks that attribute a divine birth to Perseus, Amphion, Aeacus and Minos are equally good evidence of their wondrous works on behalf of mankind-and are certainly no less lacking in plausibility that the stories of your followers. What have you done (Jesus) by word or deed that is quite so wonderful as those heroes of old?" (On the True Doctrine). Both pro-Christian apologist and anti-Christian polemicist use the same argument, but in opposite directions. Impossibility and uniqueness are not imaginable as absolute claims (maybe, of course, as hyperbolic overclaims), but superiority in action is where the debate occurs. Justin: "Jesus has done more than all those others like him." Celsus: "Jesus has done less than all those others like him."
Paul and his audience lived in a first-century pre-Enlightenment world. That precluded those two arguments of uniqueness versus impossibility that present-day believers and nonbelievers use against one another. To assert empty tomb and/or risen apparition(s) is not enough to explain anything, let alone everything in that ancient world. But that full content of Jesus' resurrection just outlined above would make for debate in that world. It was the content and implications of your miracle that mattered there. "Wow" was not enough, because there were too many "wows" around. Ancients might declare Jesus' resurrection unbelievable, but never impossible. What that audience would say to Paul is not an impolite "We do not believe you," but a polite "How nice for Jesus, but why exactly should we care about that?" Or, more bluntly, "What's in it for us?" And that is exactly when Paul would have explained willingly and in great detail, for example, the sociocosmic and religio-political difference between Julius Caesar's ascension and Jesus Christ's resurrection, and how it was time to choose one or the other.
Recall the discussion of Jewish and Christian-Jewish "resurrection" above. Those who claimed Jesus had begun the terminal movement of apocalyptic climax would have to present some public evidence of a world transformed from injustice and evil to justice and peace. It would not and could not suffice to claim one or many empty tombs and one or many risen apparitions. That might be all well and good, but where was the evidence, any evidence, of a transformed world? For that they had only their own communal lives as evidence. This is how we live with God and on this basis we seek to persuade others to do likewise. This is our new creation, our transformed world. We in God, God in us, and both together here below upon this earth.
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What Crossan and Reed are saying here is so foundational to understanding the differences between the Christianity of those who lived with and experienced Jesus, and the way so many people do it today. Going on and on about a Virgin Birth, healing miracles, a bodily resurrection, is all well and good, but it isn't sufficient to compel new followers of Christ. The "wow" factor is not enough to win souls.
Those things are but a marker of the special nature of Christ, but the thing that really brings people on board is unique way of life His followers exhibit. Whether we want to hear it or not, the draw of Christianity is not a self-apparent thing triggered by seeing a crucifix; instead, Christianity becomes a draw through us, the church, and actions we engage in, towards ourselves, towards others, and towards all Creation. We have to stand for more than the supernatural occurrences of two millenia ago; we have to follow his example and bring the Kingdom on Earth, today, now.
