The Old Testament Witness

Abstract

In contemporary biblical scholarship that investigates the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead, scholars generally pay some attention to the Old Testament. The first part of this chapter therefore examines the findings of the New Testament scholars Dale Allison and N. T. Wright and the Hebrew Bible scholar Jon Levenson. The chapter next examines St. Thomas Aquinas’s use of the Old Testament in commenting on John 20–1, the chapters of John’s Gospel that treat Jesus’ Resurrection appearances. In his commentary, of course, Aquinas is not attempting to investigate the historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection. Commenting on John 20–1, Aquinas includes 139 quotations from the Old Testament. The chapter argues that the verses selected by Aquinas play a valuable cumulative role in supporting the truth of the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.