The Historic Reliability Of The Resurrection

If you asked people what the most important thing in Christianity is, a good number of people will say that it is the Resurrection. And it’s hard to argue with that. It’s the moment when the work of Jesus culminates - to show His Earthly ministry and His death wasn’t in vein. We celebrate it during Easter. It’s one of the few holy days the Puritans recognized. Christmas gets the good press in the world and the movies but the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the moment us Christians recognize and the big moment of history.

But can we be confident it happened and how can we have confidence today that it took place?

But first, before we find out, the end of the story, we have to figure out why we got here. Why did Jesus have to die in order to be resurrected in the first place.

WHY THIS MAN

We all know the story of Adam and Eve and the first Gospel message is in Genesis 3:16 “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.””

There is the first reminder of hope that Adam and Eve have even before they find out their punishment. Then comes the even worse news. In Adam, we all take part of the sin. Romans 5:12,14: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men[e] because all sinned— Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”

What are the consequences for sin? Romans 6:23 - the wages - the thing we get because of sin - is death. And it not only affects us but the entire Creation. So the simple sin of disobedience affects our relationship with God where He is forced to expel us from His presence and His blessing but the repercussions reach to our animal friends, the trees, and even the stars in the Orion star nebula.

But the story doesn’t end at chapter 3 of Genesis. God preserves a Remnant and offers promises where He will write His Law on our hearts, He will change our hearts from hears of stone and hatred towards Him to hearts of flesh that beat for Him.

How does God remind His people to be on the look out for the coming Promised One and also remind them of the direct impact sin requires? The animal sacrificial system is established.

Rooted in the Passover sacrifice, God uses the blood and death of a spotless lamb to not visit death upon the Hebrews. From there, the Temple sacrifices are codified. And think about the impact this should have.

You’re with your father to bring this innocent and unblemished lamb before the priests. Your family has laid hands on it to signify a transfer of your sins to it. You stand in line as the priests slit the throat of the lamb and sprinkle the blood on the alter. You look up and down the line and see thousands of people waiting in the line, each with their own perfect lamb. There has to be a better way. The high priest, the only one able to walk into the inner most portion of the tent of meeting, the Holy of Holies. A rope tied around their ankle or waist in case he were to suddenly die and the other people couldn’t go in to retrieve them because they have not been specially cleansed to enter before the presence of God. And year after year, lamb after lamb, rebellion after rebellion, and sin after sin - he takes part in the slaughtering of the innocent for the wicked. There has to be a better way.

The sacrifices aren’t there to take away sin, the hoping in the coming Messiah is what saves. A righteous heart that produces good deeds is what is desired. Prophecies are made of the Messiah. Qualities and characteristics foretold. He is going to both be a son but also God. How is that possible but also why is that needed?

Just as a sacrificial system was established, the blood of bulls and goats didn’t take away sin. Only a perfect sacrifice of one to represent mankind was needed. So a fully human being who was fully perfect would have to be in place. But even from before birth we are conceived in sin and our lives are evidenced that sin is transmitted to us. And on top of that, He’s going to have to be so powerful that He withstands the full wrath of God while taking upon all the sins of His people they have committed, are committing, and will ever commit until the New Heavens and the New Earth come. He needs to be fully God.

So yes, the Resurrection is important. It is the proof that God the Father finds the sacrifice of the fully man and fully God perfect and His sacrifice is also perfect - we are unable to piecemeal the Christian religion away and boil it down only to the Resurrection. But it is important.

PROOF WITHOUT A BODY

So let’s get into the purpose of this talk. I am skipping a lot. Like how proof of the Resurrection is not where I’d always start with people who I’m talking to about the reliability of Christianity. Again, it is important and I’m sure it’s going to come up but I’m going to figure out how we both can claim something as proof and to do so we’d both have to present the worldview in which we look at all of life and all objects as proof or evidence.

But when it comes to historical evidence especially 2,000 years of all sorts of people trampling over the crime scene it makes it really hard to point to a spot with our magnifying glass and go “Ah ha!” On top of that we’re looking for not a body! But we can do this today, watching a trial in Kenosha, WI. Man was recently convicted of a murder without a body being found. But we do have a story where that body appeared again so that’s a little helpful.

For more on this, I interviewed former Cold Case detective J. Warner Wallace for the podcast I co-host and you can find both those interviews at CaveToTheCross.com/Dragnet

Because the Resurrection is a historical event and not one where we can do scientific testing on, we have to resort to the same process we establish proof of other events of history and that’s taking in eye witness testimony of those to the event and also looking for an internally consistent explanation that fits the facts.

But one thing also don’t want to pass over is that we’re not sitting here as only naturalists. We don’t just throw our hands up to the sky and say that what we see here is all that is available to us. We aren’t casting our dice down and saying nothing can be known about the outcome of these dice until they come to rest. We do have the internal conviction of the Holy Spirit. We are living in a post-Resurrection, post-Pentecost world. And so God saves us through His calling to us at the time and place He chose before the foundation of the world and has placed His Spirit in our hearts so that we are able to follow after Him. And that Spirit testifies to us to the truth of the Resurrection.

But it’s also not to say that we close our eyes to the world around us. After all, it is God’s creation and the best explanatory power we have and the ability to justify our knowing things can be found in the Christian worldview established by God. And through it we make sense of the events of the Resurrection.

You can’t use the Bible because it has supernatural elements. You mean - like the Resurrection of the guy who claims to be fully God and fully Man? That’s the whole argument. Plus, in a world where random chance dictates our every action why is it not fully believable that it just so happen that one guy who died didn’t suddenly pop back into existence?

C.S. Lewis wrote very presuppositionally in his book Miracles “For this reason, the question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.”

One last caveat, this isn’t everything. I’m not going to deal with all the counterclaims and counter-counter claims. I’m also leaving out conversations about the reliability of the The Bible and taking for granted that Jesus existed as a real person in the time and place claims - which more than a majority of scholars agree to. This is more to show the avenues you can take to have confidence in the Resurrection.

There are three main avenues to take when talking about proof of the Resurrection.

The eye witnesses to the empty tomb

The Post-Mortem Appearances - Jesus appearing after

And how the early Church formed itself on the basis of belief that the Resurrection had occurred.

Disciples Preaching

First, the disciples preaching the Resurrection would not have made sense if the tomb was not empty. The Messiah has come and it’s Jesus and He was publicly executed as a criminal by Rome and backed by the Pharisees. And His body was laid in the tomb of Joseph of Arimethea, a very rich Sadducees. And there are Roman guards set to guard the entrance of a tomb with a large rock in front of it. And that Jesus is raised from the dead - just don’t go look.

But the first message of Acts 2. After hiding behind locked doors, scared that the might of Rome would come down upon them as well. Peter and the 11 stand before Jerusalem - in the very city that the death and the Resurrection happened in and He proclaims in Acts 2:22-32:

“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him, “‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ “Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, 31 he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses” V.41 - So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

If you could visit David’s Tomb and you could visit Jesus’ tomb, why would anyone believe if they could just go to that tomb and say, “this sealed up grave isn’t empty”. The Jewish leaders would have just pointed to it. They would have asked Pilate to have the guard roll away the stone and give guided tours. That would have been the end of the Christian movement.

But it continued and it caused the Jewish leaders to still deal with the movement. So much so that they sent Saul of Tarsus to help stop the movement. Also, Joseph of Arimethea was a Sadducee. What was it that sat the Addressees apart from the Pharisees? The Resurrection of the dead! If the disciples were to make up stories about the Resurrection, Joseph of Arimethea would have been a horrible choice. But we have no objection to the Resurrection by Joseph.

Gospel Witnesses

The death, burial, and Resurrection are accounted for in early eyewitness testimony as found in the Gospels.

The Gospel accounts provide first hand accounts of many facets of the life of Jesus. Mark is taking down the word of Peter, Matthew as a former tax collector was used to taking account of information, Luke was a doctor and interviewed a number of eye witnesses, and John was part of the inner circle of Jesus.

The charge that these writing appear way to late to be believable there are a number of answers to be given. We also have very early writings of Paul in 1 Corinthians who is writing a mere number of years after the Resurrection and describes what was given to him at an even earlier time by the disciples. 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures...”

The leader of Rome during the time of Jesus’s death was Tiberius Caesar. He was the most famous person alive at the time of Jesus. He held military command, political power, he expanded the most expansive empire ever. This is what’s said about the proof of Tiberius Caesar existence from a historian:

The story of [his] reign is known from four sources

A brief record of someone else during his reign

Two works written some 80-90 years later

And a book written about 400 years later

These disagree amongst themselves in the wildest possible fashion, both in major matters of political action or motive and in specific details of minor events…But this does not prevent the belief that the material of Tacitus can be used to write a history of Tiberius” (Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, A.N. Sherwin White (p.187-188))

Do you know one of the works not mentioned by the historian here? Luke 3:1-2 “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

Even prominent people like Alexander the Great have third-hand accounts that come about 300–400 years later and give us a rough idea of what his life was like.

Historians look for at least two independent eye witnesses to establish historical reliability of an event. With the Resurrection you have at least six different independent witnesses to the empty tomb- a number of other ones we’ll discuss. But the scholars point to the burial of Jesus in the tomb as “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus” (A.T. Robinson of Cambridge University).

For more on the trustworthiness of the Bible you can go to CaveToTheCross.com/TruthInDoubt

Who were the very first witnesses to the Resurrection and the empty tomb?

The Women Witnesses

If you’re going to make up a story about the Resurrection here’s something you’d do.

Jesus comes out of the tomb as tall as a mountain, supported by two angels who are also as tall. Behind them, from the tomb, there emerges the cross, which speaks and tells God in Heaven that the Gospel has gone forth to those in Shoel. This is seen by Pilate, the Roman guards, the Jewish leaders, and onlookers. That’s from the Gospel of Peter by the Gnostics in the 3rd century.

What you wouldn’t do is:

Mark 16:1-7 - “When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” 4 And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. 5 And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. 6 And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

In Jewish culture of the time, women were not regarded as credible witnesses. Jewish historian Josephus writes: “Let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex”. Josephus never uses female witnesses in his writings except where he is forced to do so as women of a battle were the only survivors. Women in most cases weren’t called to testify in trials or establishing sin - not forbidden all the time but not the usual case (not a biblical basis either).

Socially, women were on the lower rung of the Jewish social ladder.

A Jewish rabbi in the Jerusalem Talmud said, “Sooner let the words of the Law be burnt than delivered to women.”

Rabbinical text Kiddushin “Happy is he whose children are male, but unhappy is he whose children are female.

Or a prayer from the Jewish Mishna “Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who has not created me a woman.”

In historical studies, the argument from embarrassment is a good indicator of truth. You are less likely to lie about you being foolish or wrong and to put it down in writing lends credibility to your story. Peter in the Gospel of Mark talks about his denial of Jesus. The Gospel writers talk about how they didn’t under what Jesus was teaching at the time and had to be babied along by Jesus.

And here, women witnesses being used as the first one lends a lot of credibility to the story. They were the ones revealed that Jesus was gone and they were the ones to go and tell them men disciples still hiding in a locked room. How embarrassing and how glorious.

The Post-Mordem Apperances

We’ve looked at 1 Corinthians 15 before but continuing on from v.5-8:

And that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

Peter & The 12 Apostles

Luke 24 has an interview by Luke done where it is known by two unnamed disciples on the road to Emmareus who met the risen Jesus that Jesus had already appeared to Peter. And in later portion, after they had told the story and eaten, Jesus appears to the 12. The independent witness to this also occurs in John 20:19-20 where John gives his account of Jesus appearing in the locked room.

The 500

There seems to be little reason for Paul to mention the 500, mostly still living witnesses to those he’s writing to unless the challenge was for those to go and talk with them. This challenge is offered by Paul who seems to know of the event and people personally (and some who have died personally) and he’s writing to the Corinthians who seem to have some knowledge in order for them to know where to go and look for the witnesses.

James, The Brother Of Jesus

Think about having to live up to your literally perfect older brother who thought He was the Messiah and God? James and the rest of his brothers and sisters did not believe in Jesus during His earthly ministry.

Mark 3:21 - says that James thought Jesus was out of his mind.

John 7:1-10 explicitly says, “So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him.”

Yet we see them come to belief, 1 Corinthians 9:5 “Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife,[a] as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” In Galatians 2:9, Paul lists James, John, and Peter as the three pillars of the church. James is one of only two people to meet Paul after being brought to Jerusalem, and he becomes the leader of the Jerusalem church (Acts 21:18).

What caused this? Seeing his brother’s death on the cross? That would only confirm his belief that Jesus was not sane. It seems like only something huge and unexpected could cause this revolutionary change in doubting James.

Saul Of Tarsus

The argument of Saul of Tarsus lending credence to the Resurrection is huge. Paul’s own testimony would make him the least likely convert. He was a Roman citizen who was taught by the best the Pharisees had to offer. He was given the authority and had the means to wage war against the early Christians even so far as to do what the Jewish leaders were stopped from doing - carrying out capital punishment. It was Paul who stood by the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen. It was Paul who was the first active enemy of Christianity. He had heard the message of Stephen and those he imprisoned. It would take some direct miracle to change his mind, give up everything, status, ease, non-laborious work, and cause him to be a Christ follower. This is a huge argument of embarrassment for Paul to make.

Paul went back to tent making, he lost his status among his people, he hitched his ride to the people he killed and went after, he was shipwrecked, beaten, whipped, stoned, left for dead. He went out in the world of danger and limited resources and used what he was trained in in the Old Testament to point to fulfillment of Messianic prophecies that only Jesus fulfilled. And then he was killed by Rome. He never became rich. He lost status not gained it. What - other than the Resurrection - would cause such a change in Saul who was renamed by Jesus himself, Paul.

For more on why you should believe Christianity check out the book we did at CaveToTheCross.com/WhyBelieve

So six facts are usually agreed by scholars as happening and make up what Gary Habermas titles The Minimal Facts Case:

1) that Jesus died by crucifixion;

2) that very soon afterwards, his followers had real experiences that they thought were actual appearances of the risen Jesus;

3) that their lives were transformed as a result, even to the point of being willing to die specifically for their faith in the resurrection message;

4) that these things were taught very early, soon after the crucifixion;

5) that James, Jesus’ unbelieving brother, became a Christian due to his own experience that he thought was the resurrected Christ; and

6) that the Christian persecutor Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus) also became a believer after a similar experience.

Early creeds like we looked at in 1 Corinthians 15 have early dates to no later than the mid-40s by scholars. Some scholar have gone to state the creed was date within a year or two of the death of Jesus and even one respected scholar stating 6 months after the death of Jesus.

The Origin Of The Church

Where would these changed lives and religious words of memory come from? How would people who were both men and women, Jews and Greeks and barbarians, poor and rich, slave and free set aside their most basic beliefs about the worldview and forsake their family, friends, status, and their very lives? How could those same types of men and women continue for 2,000 years through wars and famines, wealth and poverty, established on every continent, rooted and building up the entirety of Western thought and society?

Hebrews 12:1-2 - Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

How did Jesus found and perfect our faith? How did He endure the cross? How is He living and seated at the right hand of the throne of God?

I posit and the Holy Spirit testifies that it is because Jesus of Nazareth was the fully man and fully God Messiah and that living a perfect life, gave Himself freely over to die on the cross. And after fully dying after taking the full weight of sin and God’s wrath on Himself, He was buried and in three days the boulder was rolled away and He stepped forth from the tomb alive and glorified having defeated sin and death.

And it is that Jesus you and I have the privilege of worshipping and proclaiming to the nation to bow with us in awe and love. He is risen.