DID THE RESURRECTION
REALLY HAPPEN?
Every year around this
time churches are full of people celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ
and God’s promise that salvation from death has been given to us. However,
almost every year some atheist somewhere releases a new program, book, or
video, proclaiming they have discovered some purported evidence that destroys
orthodox biblical Christianity. These are always debunked later on, but the
damage is already done and the “debunking” article, book, or video never gets
the hype and exposure that the damaging one received. So this year I want to
take a look at the resurrection before Easter so we can truly celebrate on
Easter.
Unlike Thomas, we don’t
have the luxury of placing our fingers in the wounds of the resurrected Christ.
For us the greatest source of information concerning the resurrection is the Bible.
When I was in law school we were taught that if you have absolutely no defense and don't have solid ground to stand on, discredit the source of their claim. Those who say the resurrection didn’t happen usually attack the Bible saying
that it can’t be trusted; that it is a bunch of stories and legends written
down long after Jesus died and twisted to give power to those who wrote them. Therefore,
we must ask, can the history Scripture teaches be trusted?
Again, I can’t reproduce the same
kind of things that stopped Doubting Thomas from doubting, but there are
several things that we can look at to test if the resurrection taught by Scripture is
historically credible and can be trusted.
The
date of original writing is extremely close to the actual events.
The timing between the events
occurring and the writing of the events is far too short for the Gospels to be
legends. The Gospel accounts were written at the very most forty to sixty years
after Jesus' death. Paul's letters, written just fifteen to twenty-five years
after the death of Jesus, provide an outline of all the events of Jesus' life
found in the Gospels (his miracles, claims, crucifixion, and resurrection). The
two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written more than four
hundred years after Alexanders' death, yet historians consider them to be
generally trustworthy. Why? Because legendary material only began to emerge in
the centuries after the early writings, i.e. five hundred years later. So
whether the Gospels were written forty or sixty years after the life of Jesus,
the amount of time is negligible by comparison. It is therefore very unlikely
that those writings would have fallen victim to legend or faulty memories. Professor
Sherwin-White, a respected Greco-Roman classical historian from Oxford
University established that the passage of two generations was not enough time
for legend to develop in the ancient world and wipe out a solid core of
historical truth. In the case of Jesus, we have reliable information about his
divinity and resurrection that falls safely within that span.
Written
accounts circulated during time of eyewitnesses (other than NT writers).
The dates of the NT documents
indicate that they were written within the lifetime of contemporaries of
Christ. People were still alive who could remember the things he said and did.
This includes hostile eyewitnesses who would have served as a corrective
if false teachings about Jesus were going around.
Written
by eyewitnesses.
All NT writers were either
apostles or associated with the apostles as eyewitnesses and/or contemporaries.
Matthew and John were disciples of Jesus. Mark was a contemporary and associate
of the apostle Peter (1 Pet 5:13). Luke was a companion of Paul (2 Tim 4:11)
who interviewed many eyewitnesses to produce his account (Luke 1:1-4). James
and Jude were closely associated with the apostles in Jerusalem and were Jesus'
brothers.
Paul received his apostleship by a revelation from Jesus. In each case there is
a definite link between the writer and the apostles who gave them information.
The accounts were meant to stand up to scrutiny and court
challenge should blasphemy charges be laid
The way Mark (Mark 15:44-47) reports the burial is
significant: He is “certifying” that Jesus was really dead. Joseph of Arimathea
is named here as an identified witness who actually had Jesus’ body wrapped up
and sealed it in a tomb. A Roman centurion (who would be an expert) bore
witness of Jesus’ death to Pilate (who would be the legal authority on the
matter). Finally, two women are cited as eyewitnesses to the burial. So
multiple experts and witnesses prove He was really dead. Anyone at that time
could go and track down witnesses to see what had happened.
Corroborated by non-Christian accounts.
There are numerous references to Jesus as a historical figure
who died at the hand of Pontius Pilate. Some even noted that He was reported to
have risen from the dead. Tacitus, a Roman historian, made at least three
references to Christ. Josephus, a Jewish historian working for the Romans in
the first century, mentioned Jesus, His death and reports of His appearance
after death. The fact that neither Josephus nor any other contemporary of the
apostles made any attempt to refute the resurrection is significant. Also, the
Talmud, a rabbinical commentary on the Torah, mentions Jesus and the Gospels
are cited in other first-century works, including The Epistle of Barnabas, The
Didache, Clement’s Corinthians, and Ignatius’ Seven Epistles. The Nazareth Inscription is one of the
most powerful pieces of extra-biblical evidence that the resurrection of Christ
was being preached right from the earliest beginnings of Christianity.
They
died for their story.
As French mathmetition
Blaise Pascal put it, “I believe those witnesses that get their throats cut.” All
the disciples who ran away in fearful flight (John 20:19) following Jesus’
arrest and crucifixion were so convinced of the resurrection that they were willing
to risk their lives testifying to it. What gave these cowards the backbone to
do this? Virtually all the apostles and
early Christian leaders died for their faith, and it is hard to believe that
this kind of powerful self-sacrifice would be done to support a hoax. People
might live with a lie if it brings them money or power, but people won’t die
for a lie. In short, we must ask, what caused these remarkable
transformations?
The Empty Tomb
This fact is supported by three considerations. First, Jesus was buried
in a well-known tomb. This is important, because if the location of Jesus’ tomb
was uncontroversial, the claim by the early Church that Jesus had vacated His
tomb could have been easily verified (or, for that matter,
discounted). That Jesus’ tomb was well known is attested by material both early
and non-legendary. Mark’s gospel, written no more than 30 years after Jesus’
crucifixion and itself based on even earlier sources, mentions that Jesus was
buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea (Mk 15:43). This early detail can’t
be a fictitious insertion by later Christian authors. After all, Joseph was a
member of the Jewish Council (or Sanhedrin; Mk 15:43). In other words, why
would later Christians invent a story about a Jewish Sanhedrist helping Jesus?
Had the early Christians created this detail, the Jewish authorities could have
disproved it easily. They could have checked the records to find out whether or
not Joseph had been a member of the Council and/or whether or not his tomb had
been used, not to mention vacated, by Jesus.
Second, not only was Jesus’ tomb well known, it was also found empty.
This detail is also found in very early sources, this time not only in
Mark’s report (16:1–8) but also in Paul’s (implied in 1 Cor 15:4).7
In fact, many scholars date the tradition Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 15:3
to within five or six years after Jesus’ death. Moreover, Mark’s report that
the tomb was found empty by women. Celsus, a Greek philosopher who lived in the
second century A.D., was highly antagonistic to Christianity and wrote a number
of works listing arguments against it. One of the arguments he believed most
telling went like this: Christianity can’t be true, because the written
accounts of the resurrection are based on the testimony of women—and we all
know women are hysterical. And many of Celsus’ readers agreed: For them, that
was a major problem. In ancient societies, as you know, women were marginalized,
and the testimony of women was never given much credence.
Do you see what that means? If Mark and the Christians were making up
these stories to get their movement off the ground, they would never have
written women into the story as the first eyewitnesses to Jesus’ empty tomb. If
Mark and the early Christians were inventing stories, it would have been fine,
upstanding, reliable male witnesses being first at the tomb. The only possible
reason for the presence of women in these accounts is that they really were
present and reported what they saw.
The Resurrection Appearances
Paul’s early account speaks of hundreds of witnesses who claim to have
seen Jesus risen (1 Cor 15:5–9). Paul indicates in this text that the risen
Jesus not only appeared to individuals and small groups but he also appeared to
five hundred people at once, most of whom were still alive at the time of his
writing and could be consulted for corroboration. Paul’s letter was to a
church, and therefore it was a public document, written to be read aloud. Paul
was inviting anyone who doubted that Jesus had appeared to people after his
death to go and talk to the eyewitnesses if they wished. It was a bold
challenge and one that could easily be taken up, since during the pax Romana
travel around the Mediterranean was safe and easy. Paul could not have made
such a challenge if those eyewitnesses didn’t exist. There are many instances
of sightings of Jesus’ resurrection but I like to go to Paul where he says that
Jesus appears to 500 people. I like this one because it flies in the face of
the argument that these were just hallucinations of distraught people. If it
was just one or two that would be one thing, but 500 at a time is unheard of.
No one
Believed in Resurrection
Quite often I hear “Well, people back then believed in the supernatural
so they believe people could come back from the dead.” The trouble with this
statement is that if there is one thing that modern day atheist and 1st century
Jews hold in common is that they cannot believe in the resurrection. The
resurrection was as inconceivable for the first disciples, as impossible for
them to believe, as it is for many of us today. Granted, their reasons would
have been different from ours. The Greeks did not believe in resurrection; in
the Greek worldview, the afterlife was liberation of the soul from the body.
For them, resurrection would never be part of life after death. As for the
Jews, some of them believed in a future general resurrection when the entire
world would be renewed, but they had no concept of an individual rising from
the dead. The people of Jesus’ day were not predisposed to believe in
resurrection any more than we are. Even today with global communications at our
finger tips, it takes at least 20 years for a new idea to take hold and start
to be accepted. In the case of the resurrection it went from not being believed
to widely accepted overnight. Therefore, we must ask, from whence did this
belief in a bodily resurrection come from, if not from the reality of Jesus’
Resurrection appearances?
Explosion
of the Christian Church
After the death of Jesus the entire Christian community suddenly adopted
a set of beliefs that were brand-new. Their view of resurrection was absolutely
unprecedented in history. They believed that the future resurrection had
already begun in Jesus. There was no process or development. His followers said
that their beliefs did not come from debating and discussing philosophical ideas;
they were just telling others what they had seen themselves. Even if you
propose the highly unlikely idea that one or two disciples did get the idea
that He was raised from the dead on their own, they would never have got a
movement of other Jews to believe it unless there were multiple, inexplicable,
plausible, repeated encounters with Jesus.
How could a group of first-century Jews have come to worship a human
being as divine? It was absolute blasphemy to propose that any human being
should be worshipped. Yet thousands of Jews began worshipping Jesus literally
overnight. The hymn to Christ as God that Paul quotes in Philippians 2 is
generally recognised to have been written just a few years after the
crucifixion. What enormous event broke through all of that Jewish resistance?
If they had seen him resurrected, this would certainly account for it.
My Conclusion
Most people think that,
when it comes to Jesus’ resurrection the burned of proof is on believers to
give evidence that it happened. That is not completely the case. The
resurrection also puts a burden of proof on its nonbelievers. It is not enough
to simply say “I don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead.” You must come up
with a reason why, overnight, history changed course and the Christian Church
was born. Yet no reasonable answer has ever been given. Every account flies in
the face of everything we know about 1st century history and
culture.
I can sympathize with a
person who says “I don’t know history and culture but I just can’t believe the
resurrection happened.” But you know what, the 1st Century Jews and
gentiles felt exactly the same way. They found the resurrection just as
inconceivable. The only way anyone embraced the resurrection back then was by letting
the evidence challenge their preconceived notions of life and the world and their
views as to what is possible. They opened themselves to the evidence, both of
the eyewitness accounts and the changed lives of Christ’s followers – and it
was overwhelming.
