Even though my Spanish is far from perfect, I've been reading some of the scholarly material and hearing some lectures and audios by Spanish New Testament scholar Antonio Piñero, a liberal scholar who is expert in Greek philology and the original texts of the New Testament, and probably is one of the leading specialists in the New Testament in Europe. He teaches in the Universidad Complutense of Madrid (Spain).
To be honest, my impression is that Piñero is a serious, brilliant New Testament scholar. He's an agnostic and skeptical scholar (i.e. he doens't believe in God and hence he doesn't believe in miracles, let alone in Jesus' resurrection), but his approach (contrary to other liberal scholars like some of those in the Jesus Seminar) is intellectually honest, fair-minded, objective, technically competent, extremely erudite and serious.
In this post, I'd like to comment in just one of professor Piñero's views on the historical Jesus: Jesus' predictions of his own resurrection in Mark.
According to Piñero, careful observers and readers will realize a kind of inconsistency or contradiction in Mark regarding the resurrection. He says that in Mark 8: 31 (and in chapter 9 and 10 too), Jesus informed his disciples a prediction about his future resurrection. However, in Mark 16: 6-8, it is written that women, when informed by the angel about Jesus' resurrection, were victim of fear and panic and didn't tell anybody about the resurrection.
According to Piñero, this reaction by the women is inexplicable, because they received a very good news (Jesus' resurrection) which confirmed Jesus' own prediction about it, and it doesn't make any sense to react with such a panic, let alone to keep silence about such a good news.
Piñero's explanation is this: Jesus' prediction of his own resurrection in Mark are a later addition (created, perhaps, with basis in certain words of Jesus) AFTER the resurrection, i.e. a later addition after the disciples became convinced of Jesus' resurrection, and from there they made the Christian theology which eventually coloured the Gospel narratives (in which Jesus' life was interpreted in the light of such theological convictions of a risen Jesus).
There are (in my view at least two) fatal objections to professor Piñero's position:
1-What we need to be explain first is WHY hard-core monotheistic jews (who considered that God is only one and the resurrection will be a general one in the end of the days to all the chosen people) became strongly convinced of Jesus' resurrection (before the general resurrection).
The disciples had every theological and religious predisposition and bias AGAINST seeing any person (specially a Messiah who was humilliated and defeated by his opponents and in addition crucified and hence cursed according the Jewish law) as God or as the only resurrected Son of God.
2-Moreover, the evidence in Mark shows that the disciples didn't understand what Jesus meant in his predictions about his "resurrection" (Mark 9:10 and Mark 9:32; see also Luke 18: 33-34), which passes positively the criterion of authenticity known as "historical fit", because such lack of understanding fits with the known Jewish belief that no person is resurrected before the general resurrection. So, they couldn't understand exactly what Jesus was talking about in his prediction.
We cannot simply, as Piñero does, accept unproblematically the resurrection belief by the disciples, and from there to try to explain Jesus' predictions of his own resurrection as later additions, because the origin of the resurrection belief itself is more problematic, antecedently unlikely and inexplicable (if the resurrection didn't occur) than any record about a previous prediction of it. (In fact, note that you cannot explain the origin of the disciples' belief in the resurrection as a theological colouring or invention by the early Christian church, because such a Church simply didn't exist before the belief in the resurrection was formed).
As a rule, liberal scholars try to explain (or perhaps, explain away) any evidence suggesting divinity in Jesus (e.g. Jesus implicit claims of divinity, or his resurrection) assuming that such reports are later additions created by Christians. But as explained above, such liberal approach puts the cart before the horse: What need to be explained is why the disciples became convinced of Jesus' divinity, and an explanation for this is precisely the one that the reports say: That Jesus' life and teachings explicitly or implicitly claimed a divine status (which would explain the Jewish instigation against Jesus as a "blasphemous" and eventually led to his crucifixion), which culminated with the resurrection as the ultimate vindication by God of Jesus' claims of divine authority.
After several decades of skepticism regarding Jesus' teachings implying divinity, in the last 20 years or so (as far my study of the literature goes), an increasing number of scholars in America and Europe, including liberal, are accepting that Jesus' teachings included elements implying a sort of divine status or authority or condition, which set him apart of any other prophet or teacher.
Even a member of the Jesus Seminar (in my opinion, the most honest, serious and rigurous member of that group) agnostic scholar James G. Crossley has written that on historical grounds he believes that: "Famous terms for Jesus such as "son of Man" or "Son of God" really were being used by or of Jesus when he was alive. Jesus did really practised healing and exorcism; and Jesus really did predict his imminent death and probably thought it had some atoning function." (How did Christianity begin? p.1)
If you add the resurrection to Crossley's picture (which he doesn't accept for philosophical reasons, see below), the you have the essentials of Christianity (or "mere" Christianity as C.S.Lewis called it).
Liberal scholars tend to dislike the above conclusions, because it sounds too Christian. Hence, they try to undermine the status of Jesus' teachings, making them a kind of popular sage or mere teller of stories, in order to make the resurrection even more improbable and attribute the whole origin of Christianity to the amazingly strong powers of invention, wishful thinking and fabrication of the early Church.
Fortunately, there are exists some serious liberal scholars like Piñero or Crossley (even if I disagree with them on many points) who are more honest and balanced in the treatment of the evidence.
For Crossley's view on the resurrection of Jesus, see his debate with William Lane Craig:
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