IS THE RESURRECTION HISTORY? 5 Facts that Confirm Jesus Rose from Death

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The most important aspect of Christian belief is that Jesus Christ died for our sins, and then physically rose from the dead. If this is true, any other fact about our world is dwarfed in comparison. If it’s false, then the Bible is just gibberish, but if it’s true, then you and I had better take everything that scripture says seriously. For centuries skeptics have told us that the resurrection can’t be true, either the disciples hallucinated everything, or perhaps Jesus didn’t really die—He just laid wounded in a tomb for three days before hopping out of bed. But the truth is the more we explore what surrounds the resurrection narrative of the Gospels, the only plausible explanation remaining is a miracle. In what follows we’ll examine some of the historical data that virtually all historians agree on so that you can know how trustworthy the story of the resurrection truly is.

HOW TO DO HISTORY

Because historical events are, by definition, things that happened in the past and can’t be repeated in a laboratory, historians operate on a scale of probability. Court systems today operate on the same basis and make their decisions based on “proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” or as one legal expert puts it “proof that makes the truth of an accusation more probable than not.”[1] This is the same basic criteria that historians use to investigate instances in the past. We don’t have photographic evidence that Abraham Lincoln was murdered in the Ford Theatre or that Napolean Bonaparte ever existed, but we take those things for granted because the data leaves us with no other options. As one famous philosopher has said, “Though we have not seen the man (Napoleon), yet we cannot explain what we have seen without the hypothesis of his existence”[2] When all the data surrounding the story of Jesus is considered, we can confidently say the same about that event as well.

BUT FIRST, CAN THE BIBLE BE CONSIDERED HISTORY?

When thinking about the Bible, many people make a false distinction. They think that just because the Bible talks about miracles and religious figures, it can’t be considered historically reliable. But that distinction isn’t based on fact, but bias. As Oxford historian John Dickson writes,

            “… the so-called “religious” nature of Christian writings in no way diminishes their value as historical sources. Historians take the Christian agenda into account when they analyse the New Testament, just as they take the imperial bias into account when studying Tacitus or the Jewish bias when reading Josephus, but historians do not place the New Testament in a special category … it is no exaggeration to say that historians (no matter what their persuasion) universally regard the New Testament writings as the earliest, most plentiful and most reliable sources of information about the Jesus of history.”[3]

The New Testament contains four separate biographies of Jesus—the Gospels. This collection gives us most of our information about the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. These are our best and earliest sources. But there are many other non-biblical sources that also confirm what the New Testament teaches. This is why historians can look at all the details surrounding the story of Jesus and, regardless of their personal beliefs, confirm the following basic historical facts. When we put all these facts together, it tells us that the resurrection is something that we can trust to be accurate and true.

5 FACTS THAT CONFIRM THE RESURRECTION 

  1. Jesus Christ died by crucifixion, under the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

The Bible tells us that Jesus was accused of blasphemy for claiming to be the Son of God. He was put on trial and sentenced to death by crucifixion under the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. This is what other sources outside the Bible tell us as well. Tacitus, hailed to be the most reputable historian from ancient Rome, tells us that Pilate sentenced Jesus to the “extreme penalty” of crucifixion. Likewise the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus who later served in the Roman court confirms this in his book Antiquities as well. Other sources include Lucian of Samosata, Mara Bar Serapion, and the Jewish Talmud. The Talmud even specifies the same date as the Bible, telling us that Jesus was “hanged (crucifixion was often referred to as being hung on a tree) on the eve of Passover.”

            Those who would suggest that Jesus may not have actually died are also at odds with the data. Not only would Roman executioners be punished if they failed at their job, but the Bible also gives us medical clues that point to the certainty of Christ’s death in the Gospel of John. While Jesus was hanging and the Romans wanted to ensure His death, the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear. John was an eyewitness and says that he saw how the wound produced a flow of blood and water (John 19:34). The mixture of blood and water is a unique phenomenon that means Jesus died. As the Journal of the American Medical Association writes:

            “Clearly, the weight of historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted and supports the traditional view that the spear, thrust between his right rib, probably perforated not only the right lung but also the pericardium and heart and thereby ensured his death.”[4]

This is why even non-Christian scholars say Jesus’ death was “as sure as anything historical can ever be.”[5]

  1. Women Were the First Witnesses

Scholars agree that first people who claimed to see Jesus risen from the dead, were women. This is important because in the ancient world women weren’t really trusted to be reliable witnesses. The ancient historian Flavius Josephus says, “but let not the testimony of women be admitted on account of the levity or boldness of their sex … since it is probably that they may not speak truth either out of hope of gain or fear of punishment.”[6] If one were to create a conspiracy about Jesus rising from the dead, choosing women to be your main sources would not be a smart move in that day. Nevertheless, women were providentially chosen by God to be the first people that Jesus would appear to. This fact fits with the historical criterion called the “principle of embarrassment.” This means that sources are taken more seriously when they include details that may seem embarrassing to the point the writers were trying to make.

  1. The Disciples Believed They Witnessed the Resurrection

            Regardless of how they interpret the fact, virtually all scholars acknowledge that the disciples believed they experienced the risen Jesus. Gerd Ludemann, who is an atheist scholar of the New Testament, says this, “It may be historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.” Another skeptical historian out of Boston University, Paula Fredriksen, agrees with Ludemann. She says, “that’s what they say, and then all the historic evidence we have afterwards attest to their conviction that’s what they saw.”[7]

Aside from the Gospels, The New Testament also includes a letter that contains important information about the resurrection. The Apostle Paul describes how the risen Jesus appeared to many different people, even 500 different witnesses at one time (1 Cor. 15:6). Within his letter he also recites a resurrection creed, or popular saying that communities would memorize. Paul’s letter is dated to about 20 years after Jesus, but scholars say the creed might have arisen only a few years after Jesus’ resurrection. This is an amazing record of how the earliest witnesses believed Jesus truly did rise from the dead! Based on traditions and other historical sources, it’s also likely that all of Jesus’ original 12 disciples, except John, died for their testimonies about Jesus’ resurrection. Dying for your beliefs doesn’t necessarily make them true, but it does mean those beliefs are sincere. If the apostles were claiming they saw the resurrection for personal gain, they would have had lots of chances to deny what they were claiming.

  1. The Empty Tomb

While the empty tomb isn’t as universally agreed upon as the previous points, about 80% of scholars believe in ancient Jerusalem, Jesus’ tomb was empty. This is significant because to disprove the Christian faith (which many political forces were trying to do at the time) all one would have to do is point to the body of Jesus still being in the tomb. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that the authorities set guards over the tomb but that those guards encountered an angel who rolled the stone covering away (tombs in that day were small enclosures that were blocked by a large rolling stone). The guards then reported what they saw and were given “hush money” to keep what happened secret. They were also told to tell people that the body of Jesus was stolen away during the night. This would have been virtually impossible, given how difficult it would be to steal a dead body that was guarded and locked away in a tomb. But surprisingly, even the earliest critics of Christianity repeated the claim that Jesus’ disciples stole the body from the tomb. The conspiracy ultimately backfires because all it does is prove that Jesus’ tomb was empty. An empty tomb is hard to explain outside of a physical resurrection.

  1. Skeptics Claim to Experience the Risen Jesus

Not only did the original disciples of Jesus claim to have living experiences with Jesus’ after His death, but the New Testament tells us that even people who were hostile to him did as well. The gospels tell us that Jesus’ brothers (yes, He had a few) ridiculed Him and challenged His teachings (Mark 3:21, John 7:5). Yet soon after His death, we see one of them—James—rise quickly to ranks of leadership within the Jerusalem church. What might be the reason for this drastic turnaround? In the apostle Paul’s chronology of resurrection appearances, we read that James had an encounter with the Risen Christ after the five hundred (1 Cor. 15:7). The former skeptic became known as “bishop of bishops” and today we can even read one of his letters in the New Testament. His faith ultimately led him to be martyred by the same religious leaders that indicted his brother before him. He was martyred somewhere between A.D. 62-69.

The second skeptic turned martyr was Paul. He is one of the most accomplished writers and missionaries in the New Testament, but before that he was a violent persecutor of Christians. He too claimed to have a revolutionary encounter with the risen Jesus. While journeying to a different city on his way to put Christians to death or into prison, the Bible tells us that he saw Jesus (Acts 9:1-18).

Paul’s encounter involved dramatic details, like a light flashing all around him from heaven, but he still claims to encounter the risen Christ (1 Cor. 15:8). Like James, Paul suffered the way of martyrdom in Rome (A.D. 64-67) under Emperor Nero who was intoxicated with the same hatred of Christ that previously motivated Paul. The drastic nature of his conversion can only be explained by the encounter He claimed to have with the risen Jesus.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

The points I’ve listed above are accepted by most historians today. If we put them together, we’ll find that the best explanation isn’t some kind of ridiculous conspiracy, but that Jesus really did rise from the dead and appear to His disciples. This is the event turned the world upside down 2,000 years ago. But the resurrection wasn’t just a cool miracle—it had a purpose. The Bible says that the resurrection was meant to demonstrate the power of Jesus’ sacrifice. Jesus’ death wasn’t an accident, He said He came to earth in the form of human flesh, to die the death that we deserved for our sins. The event was even predicted by the Hebrew prophets hundreds of years before Jesus was even born. As the prophet Isaiah says,

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.  (Isaiah 53:5-6)

In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God isn’t just doing a cool miracle, He’s redeeming humanity from the power of sin. This is why the historical evidence surrounding the resurrection doesn’t just provide us with confidence in miracles, it gives us hope in the life to come. To God be all the glory! 

Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” (John 14:19).

 

 

Citations

[1] Gary R. Habermas, Mike Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2004), 32.

[2] Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell

[3] John Dickson, The Christ Files: How Historians Know What They Know About Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 56 (E-Book on Scribd.com).

[4] Norman Geisler, The Big Book of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing, 2012), 77.

[5] Geisler, 77.

[6] Habermas, 49.

[7] Ibid., 58.