Evidence For Belief, Episode 23: 7 Historical Facts About The Resurrection

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Here are seven historical facts that support the resurrection of Jesus. These are historical facts that no serious historian denies, and the best explanation for them is that Jesus really did rise from the dead.

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TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Episode 23 of Evidence For Belief, a series which examines evidence for the existence of God. In this episode I will present seven historical facts that support the resurrection of Jesus. And I want to emphasise from the very beginning that these are not contentious theories or spurious arguments. They are undisputed historical facts that are accepted by all serious historians, not just Christians. And I maintain that the best and most logical explanation of these historical facts is that Jesus really did rise from the dead.

In presenting these historical facts, I will be referring to the New Testament documents as well as several other first and second century documents. Regarding the New Testament documents, I am not asking you to believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible, even though that is my view. Instead, I am simply treating the New Testament documents as reliable historical records from the first century.

Now, I realise that many sceptics dispute the historical reliability of the New Testament. I regularly encounter sceptics who claim that the Bible is just a bunch of fanciful stories, and some people even claim that Jesus never existed. If that is your view, I want to make a couple of brief comments. I’ve dealt with these issues at greater depth in Episodes 16, 17 and 18, but here is a very brief summary.

Firstly, no serious historian doubts the existence of Jesus. Even atheist historians acknowledge Jesus as a real first century person. For example, respected historian Dr. Bart Erman, who is a professed agnostic, was asked in a radio interview if Jesus really existed, and he replied: “Yes. There is no serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus. There are a lot of people who want to write sensational books claiming that Jesus didn’t exist, but I don’t know any serious scholar who doubts the existence of Jesus.”

Secondly, I point out that the New Testament documents themselves are held in the very highest regard by historians in the academic world. While not every historian believes in the miraculous explanations and inferences that the New Testament contains, it is considered to be a very accurate portrayal of certain events in that part of the world in the first century. For example, at my local university, Macquarie University, the Ancient History Department specifies the New Testament as one of the key texts for one of its courses that studies the first century. So, you don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate the historical accuracy of these New Testament documents.

Even those few historians who have sought to discredit the historicity of the New Testament have not succeeded in doing so. Perhaps the most famous example is the British historian and scholar, Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, who set out to disprove the reliability of Luke, the author of two books of the New Testament, the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostle. But after several years of historical and archaeological research Sir William Ramsay published this conclusion:

 “Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy…this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians. Luke’s history is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness…” (Ramsay, W. M. (1907). The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament. London: Hodder & Stoughton.)

More recently, classical secular historian, Dr Michael Grant, wrote: “If we apply to the New Testament, the same sort of criteria as we apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.”

There’s much more I could say concerning the historical reliability of the New Testament documents, including the eight-fold Criteria of Historical Reliability (which I have written about extensively elsewhere). But I want to move on now and examine the historical facts that these first century documents describe. These are 7 facts of history that no reputable historian disputes – facts which, I believe, are best explained by the literal resurrection of Jesus.

 And here they are. I’ll start by briefly listing them:

  1. Jesus’ tomb was discovered to be empty on the 1st day of the week, AND his dead body was never located. NEVER!
  2. The disciples became convinced of his resurrection, despite their initial reluctance and lack of expectation.
  3. Many people claimed to see the resurrected Jesus over a period of 40 days.
  4. There is the historical absence of first century literary refutation.
  5. There is the extremely narrow time gap between the event and the literary record of the event.
  6. Many hundreds of first century Christians were eventually prepared to be martyred rather than recant their belief in Jesus’ resurrection.
  7. There is the remarkable conversion of Saul and his subsequent radically transformed life.

Now let’s look at each of these individually.

  1. Jesus’ tomb was discovered to be empty on the 1st day of the week, AND his dead body was never located. NEVER!

This is undisputed by historians.  For instance, there is the historian, Dr Michael Grant, who was arguably one of the most highly regarded classical historians of the 20th Century and who published over 60 books and academic papers – and who was very clearly NOT a Christian. He wrote this in regard to the empty tomb of Jesus:

“The historian cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb… if we apply the same sort of criteria that we would apply to any other ancient literary sources, then the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was indeed found empty.” (Grant, M. (1986). Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.)

Furthermore, not only was the tomb of Jesus indisputably empty a couple of days after his crucifixion, but his dead body was never found.

This is a very important point. The Jewish authorities would have been extremely keen to squash any rumours of Jesus’ resurrection and, of course, the most effective way of doing that would have been to produce his dead body and say to his followers, “Here’s his dead body. He isn’t risen from the dead! Now go away you stupid Christians and stop spreading this ridiculous rumour!” But they never did that, because they couldn’t! And that’s because his dead body was never found.

Now, as I say, the empty tomb and the missing body of Jesus is an undisputed historical fact. No serious historian doubts it. How we explain that fact, however, is another matter. Sceptics have tried to explain the empty tomb of Jesus in two ways.

The first is the claim that Jesus only swooned or fainted on the cross and later revived in the tomb and then rolled the two-tonne stone away and burst out of the tomb, apparently also overpowering the Roman guard of highly trained soldiers. This is known as the swoon theory. But, as evidence against this, the Gospels describe the sudden flow of blood and water that poured out of Jesus’ side when the Roman soldier thrust his spear inside Jesus’ chest as he hung on the cross. Doctors who have analysed that description assure us that this indicates the rupturing of the pericardium around Jesus’ heart and of the heart itself and this constitutes incontrovertible proof that Jesus was well and truly dead! And bear in mind also that he was pronounced dead by a professional Roman executioner at the sight of the crucifixion. And these were guys who were experts in death – experts in causing it and in diagnosing it. They didn’t make mistakes.

It’s abundantly clear that Jesus was well and truly dead – as dead as you can get! So the swoon theory just doesn’t cut it!

The only other reasonable alternative open to sceptics is that someone, presumably the disciples, stole the body of Jesus in order to promote the myth of his resurrection. But this is contradicted by the historical accounts which tell us four important things:

  1. The disciples had no pre-existing expectation of a resurrection.
  2. They were terrified and in hiding after the crucifixion – thinking that they were going to be next.
  3. The tomb was guarded by a squad of hardened Roman soldiers against whom the timid disciples would have had no chance of either overpowering or circumventing.
  4. The disciples were very slow to be convinced of the resurrection themselves after it happened. They didn’t even believe it at first!

Neither of these explanations, that Jesus merely fainted or that the disciples stole the body, is supported by the historical records and also by common sense. I believe that the best explanation of the empty tomb, from a purely logical and historical perspective, is that Jesus really did rise from the dead. And this explanation is further strengthened by the second historical fact that I now want to discuss. The first fact is the fact of the empty tomb. The second fact is:

  1. The disciples became convinced of Jesus’ resurrection, despite their initial reluctance and lack of expectation.

The historical records indicate several key things here:

  • Firstly, the disciples had no pre-existing expectation of Jesus rising from the dead. Even the several hints that Jesus gave concerning his forthcoming death and resurrection were not picked up by the disciples at all – they remained completely oblivious to the whole concept of resurrection until after it happened.
  • Secondly, when the male disciples were told by the women disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead, they did not initially believe them.

 

  • Thirdly, even after Jesus appeared to some more disciples, the others struggled to believe.

 

 

  • Yet, despite their complete lack of expectation and their initial reluctance to believe, they very quickly became completely convinced and then spent the rest of their lives proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus. We know this from a number of historical sources which refer to individual disciples travelling to different parts of the known world passionately proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection.

So this second historical fact, the dramatic turn-around in the disciples, the fact that they became utterly convinced of Jesus’ resurrection and were subsequently relentlessly passionate about proclaiming it, is not disputed by any historian. Something clearly happened to convince them and cause such a dramatic turn-around, and once again the best explanation is that they did indeed encounter the risen Jesus.

  1. The third historical fact is that many other first century people, apart from the disciples, claimed to see the resurrected Jesus over a period of 40 days.

The Apostle Paul writes that, on one occasion, Jesus appeared alive again to a crowd of more than 500 people (1 Corinthians 15:5-8) and the New Testament documents refer to these post-resurrection appearances occurring over a period of 40 days. Many hundreds of people experienced these post resurrection appearances.

Referring to these widespread appearances, the first century Roman Senator and historian, Cornelius Tacitus confirmed that many people in Judea claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus. He wrote:

 “…Christus, from whom the name [Christians] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most dangerous belief, thus checked for the moment, again broke out in Judea …”

The Greek phrase translated here as “dangerous belief”, can also be translated as annoying myth or mischievous superstition. So clearly, Tacitus didn’t believe the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. And this is completely understandable because Tacitus wrote from a point of both geographic and cultural dislocation. Culturally, he was immersed in the worship of a multiplicity of Roman Gods, so he was predisposed to disbelieve anything that lay outside of that framework. And geographically, he was writing in Rome, having heard of these accounts from Judea but not having travelled there to interview the eye-witnesses to ascertain the validity of their testimony. So it’s completely understandable that he remained hostile toward these eye-witness accounts.

But the important point for our consideration here is that Tacitus confirmed what we know from the biblical records, that within a few days of Jesus’ crucifixion there was an explosion in Judea of many hundreds of eye-witnesses who claimed to have seen Jesus alive again.

So this widespread claim of people believing they had seen Jesus risen from the dead is an established historical fact. And there are really only two explanations for this fact – either people were experiencing mass delusions, or they really did see Jesus alive again. And it’s very difficult to maintain the mass delusion theory. Mass delusions require all kinds of pre-existing expectations and coincidental factors that simply weren’t at play in these multiple and varied sightings. The explanation that best fits the facts is that Jesus did rise from the dead and was seen by hundreds of people over a period of 40 days.

  1. There is the historical absence of first century literary refutation.

I explained this in Episode 18. If the resurrection of Jesus was a myth and his dead body remained in the tomb, the New Testament literature proclaiming his resurrection would have been refuted by a large body of first century literature, just as any false claims or myths today prompt literary refutation. The Jewish authorities, having just executed Jesus in order to extinguish his growing influence, would have been extremelykeen to squash false rumours of Jesus’ resurrection. Proclamations by them and others, denouncing the false belief in Jesus’ resurrection should have abounded, particularly pointing out the well-guarded tomb and the body that still resided within it. It’s unthinkable that Jesus’ enemies would have sat idly by, witnessing the flood of Christian literature circulating around the world claiming that Jesus had risen from the dead, without trying to counter that claim via their own proclamations. But, staggeringly, there is resounding literary silence on this matter from the Jewish authorities. There is NO first century literary refutation – even by Jesus’ enemies.

Some sceptics explain this by claiming that the literary refutation by Jesus’ enemies has simply not survived to the present day.  But this requires belief in a strange kind of literary serendipity; that the extensive body of literary works proclaiming the resurrection largely survived, while all the literary works refuting it didn’t!

This seems highly unlikely, especially since we have the Jewish Talmud, which was being written at the time of Jesus, and which, very significantly contains no refutation of the resurrection, even though it mentions Jesus, his miracles and his crucifixion.

The most reasonable explanation for this lack of literary refutation is that the Jewish authorities COULDN’T refute the resurrected Jesus had appeared to many hundreds or even thousands of people in Jerusalem and throughout Judea, as Paul, the Gospel writers and the Roman historian Tacitus all reported. The silence of the Jewish authorities on this matter seems to have arisen from the fact that they would appear foolish to deny the resurrection when so many people had seen Jesus alive again.

  1. There is the extremely narrow time gap between the event and the literary record of the event.

I have written about this extensively elsewhere and mentioned it previously in Episode 18.

Fabrication and mythological embellishment is simply not possible if it occurs too close to the original events, as it would be too easily refuted by those who witnessed the original events.

The New Testament accounts of Jesus’ resurrection were written and circulated within the lifetime of the eye-witnesses to Jesus’ life and death. The time gap is extremely short.

 For example, Paul’s account of Jesus’ resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 describes the many hundreds of people who saw Jesus alive again and adds the comment “most of whom are still living” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

The circulation of the biblical accounts of the resurrection within the lifetime of the eye-witnesses is an established historical fact which makes the absence of first century literary refutation even more significant.

  1. Many hundreds of first century Christians were prepared to be martyred rather than recant their belief in Jesus’ resurrection.

This is an undisputed historical fact.  The Roman historian Tacitus, refers to the Emperor Nero’s persecution of Christians in the Colloseum in Rome, where these first century believers were put to death for their belief in the resurrection and divinity of Jesus. Hundreds or perhaps even thousands of Christians went willingly to their deaths rather than recant their belief in Jesus’ resurrection. They were devoured by lions, put to the sword, burnt alive and even ripped apart by chariots.

Furthermore, 11 of the 12 original Apostles were among those who were martyred in this way, along with the Apostle Paul. Various historical accounts record their executions over the next few decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection. This is significant that the leaders of the church themselves were willing to die for this belief. If they were knowingly foisting a myth on the populace, they would surely not have given their lives for that myth, because no-one in their right mind knowingly dies for a lie.

I have shown the following graphic in a previous episode, but it is worth repeating again here. It shows the disciples gathered in a huddle and one of them says: “OK guys, here’s the plan! We get the body out of the tomb and stash it somewhere. Then we come back here and tell a story that will probably get us all killed. So, who’s with me on this?”

The martyrdom of these early Christians for their belief in Jesus’ resurrection is an undisputed historical fact which, at the very least, indicates the strength and sincerity of their belief. But what could account for such a resolute belief. Once again, I think the best explanation is that they really had seen Jesus alive again; an event that transformed them from timid believers into people who were willing to die for that belief.

  1. Finally, there is the remarkable conversion of Saul and his subsequent radically transformed life.

Saul the Pharisee was initially so sceptical about the resurrection of Jesus that he was travelling throughout the land arresting Christians and having some of them stoned to death. His remarkable turn-around to then become one of Christianity’s leading advocates is undisputed by historians. No one disputes his conversion. That is a fact of history.

For instance, A.N. Wilson, a highly respected British historian, in his book Paul: The Mind of the Apostle, writes:

“Paul’s conversion is one of the great, mysterious moments in history. Whatever it was that happened to him on the road to Damascus, it changed the history of the world. The persecutor became the apostle, and the energy with which he had sought to crush the nascent church was now turned to its most determined propagation.” (Wilson, A.N. (1997). Paul: The Mind of the Apostle. New York: W.W. Norton & Company).

What was it that prompted Paul’s conversion? Paul actually tells us. On six separate occasions in his subsequent letters to churches he speaks of his transformation from being a persecutor of the church to become an Apostle of Jesus, and he consistently puts this down to Jesus actually appearing to him. For example he writes these statements:

“I have seen Jesus our Lord” (1 Cor 9:1)

“I received a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:12)

“God was pleased to reveal his Son to me” (Gal 1:15)

These and other statements reference Paul’s dramatic encounter with the risen Jesus, recorded for us in Acts 9, while Paul was travelling to Damascus to arrest more Christians.

While Saul’s conversion doesn’t constitute incontrovertible PROOF of Jesus’ resurrection, it is certainly strong evidence. From a purely historical perspective, something extraordinary happened to him on the road to Damascus to have caused such a dramatic backflip. And Saul the Pharisee does NOT give any indication of being the kind of person who is subject to hallucinations or delusional flights of fancy. He was initially a hard-nosed hater and persecutor of Christians.

And, in the end, as I’ve already mentioned, Paul was executed Rome for his belief in the resurrection of Jesus.

Paul’s conversion from a rabid opponent of Jesus to someone willing to die for his belief in the resurrected Jesus is very powerful historical evidence and it’s difficult to explain in any other way!

SUMMARY

 In conclusion, we have these 7 undisputed historical facts:

  1. Jesus’ tomb was discovered to be empty on the 1st day of the week, AND his dead body was never located. NEVER!
  2. The disciples became convinced of his resurrection, despite their initial reluctance and lack of expectation.
  3. Many people claimed to see the resurrected Jesus over a period of 40 days.
  4. There is the historical absence of first century literary refutation
  5. There is the extremely narrow time gap between the event and the literary record of the event
  6. Many hundreds of first century Christians were prepared to be martyred rather than recant their belief in Jesus’ resurrection.
  7. There is the remarkable conversion of Saul and his subsequent radically transformed life, including his eventual willingness to die for his belief in Jesus’ resurrection.

Individually, each one of these historical facts is significant. But when considered together, I believe they constitute extremely convincing evidence for the veracity of Jesus’ resurrection.

Significantly, these 7 historical events that provide evidence for the resurrection of Jesus have been put to the test in a number of mock legal trials and formal legal analyses over the years. In fact, there have been at least seven of these legal cases:

  1. There was the legal analysis of the evidence undertaken by the Harvard law professor, Simon Greenleaf, and published in his book, “The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence”. Greenleaf concluded that the evidence would be admissible in a court of law and was entirely credible and convincing.
  2. There was the research and mock trial conducted by legal scholar and historian, Dr John Warwick Montgomery, who concluded that the most plausible explanation for all the evidence was that Jesus did rise from the dead.
  3. There was the British mock trial in 1931 conducted by the highly qualified lawyer Sir Edward Clarke, at the end of which he concluded: “As a lawyer, I have made a prolonged study of the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. To me, the evidence is conclusive.”
  4. There was the legal assessment by respected lawyer, David Limbaugh, who published his findings in his book, “Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel” in which he declared that the textual and historical evidence amounted to overwhelming evidence for the veracity of the resurrection.
  5. There was the debate between Dr William Lane Craig and the noted atheist Dr Antony Flew in the 1980s using legal considerations to evaluate theevidence for the resurrection. Not only did Dr Craig, a Christian, win the debate, but several years later Dr Antony Flew recanted his atheism and became a believer himself – a development which completely shocked the atheist world.

Dr Flew’s explanation of his radical change of mind was his statement, “We must follow the evidence wherever it leads.”, published in his book, “There Is A God: How The World’s most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind”

  1. Then there was the Chicago Mock Trial in 1986 in which prominent attorneys and historians subjected the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection to the normal legal tests and concluded that, based on that evidence, the most likely explanation is that Jesus did rise from the dead.
  2. And finally, there is the legal and historical analysis conducted by Lee Strobel, an investigative journalist for the Chicago Tribune. His wife converted to Christianity and Lee, who was an atheist, became very concerned. In order to “rescue” his wife from the church, he set out to disprove Christianity, focussing on the resurrection story. He spent 18 months, utilising his skills as a researcher and investigative reporter, interviewing experts from around the world, studying the 1st century documents for himself and subjecting all the evidence to the most rigorous legal and historical scrutiny.

The overwhelming evidence for the resurrection of Christ eventually led to his own conversion, and he went on to write the now famous book, “The Case For Christ”[i] (recently made into a movie), along with several other books in the series, which have led many people to faith in Christ.

The point I am making here is that the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is extremely convincing and it stands up to the most stringent legal and historical analysis. In fact, there is more evidence for the resurrection of Jesus than for many other events from antiquity which have significantly less corroborating documentation.

 N.T. Wright, an eminent historian, wrote in his recent study of the resurrection:

“As an historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him. The empty tomb and the subsequent appearances of Jesus have a historical probability so high as to be virtually certain, like the death of Augustus in AD 14 and the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.” [1]

And if the resurrection DID occur, it changes the whole ballgame. It means that the question of God’s existence and the existence of an afterlife has been firmly established. And if that is the case, if there IS a God, and death will not be the end for ANY of us (as Jesus clearly taught), it makes this the most important issue that any of us must come to terms with and respond to.

And that is the topic of the next episode.

For more information, you can check out my books, which are available from my website, smartfaith.net, where you can also subscribe to my weekly blog.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] N. T Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2003, p. 710

 

[i] Lee Strobel, “The Case For Christ”, Zondervan Press, 1998