The Resurrection of Jesus

 Here are some thoughts I had when reading a book about the resurrection. Please feel free to comment

When I was at school, I developed a passion for something that was considered weird by many others. I fell in love with history as a subject and as an idea. For me, the thrill of finding out what happened and why was very exciting. I still remember to this day sitting down having a coffee once and suddenly it all clicked. Everything that I had been studying for months suddenly made sense. It was a lightbulb moment par excellence. Sadly, it was an hour after the exam I needed to have it all make sense for but I appreciated it all the same.

I fell in love with something else whilst studying history. I will leave the revelation till later but it was my skills as a historian that led me to the decision I made. I had spent several years studying the past and I suppose I had learned two things. It’s notoriously hard to sum up what a historian should do but the best I can come up with is this: analyse all (or as much as you can) of the evidence that is available and never go in with a preconception.

This is what was on my mind when I was challenged by a very dear friend to consider one of the greatest historical conundrums of all time; the resurrection of Jesus. I didn’t come from a religious home, I rarely went to church while growing up (when I did it was usually to spend an hour and a half playing a trombone badly) and had never read the Bible with anything approaching an open mind. Still, I had, at university started going to church and I wanted to ensure that I approached with an open mind what I was being told.

So, to cut a long story short, I looked into all the evidence that I could find for the things I was being told and reached a decision; a decision that changed my life.

What I would like to do is to talk about the most important teaching of Christianity, the one without which Christianity would fall; the resurrection. I want to look at evidence and some of the different theories that have been put out to explain this.. Please be assured that I did approach this with an open mind and I would ask that you do the same.

The Resurrection of Jesus is the most important fact in history. Whether or not you believe it, countless millions have done so and they have changed the world. Those who believe tat on the first Easter Sunday Jesus came out of the grave and those who do not have been responsible for some of the most momentous decisions of all time. This is something that everybody should at some time reach a decision about. Hopefully what I say here can help someone reach their decision.

Before we start, here are the basic elements of the story as told in the Gospel of Luke (which I am using as it is my favourite version, perhaps because of Luke's great skills as an historian): Jesus was crucified on the Friday, was identified as dead by an experienced soldier and was buried in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea, an important Jewish man. On the Sunday morning, some of his followers (women because the men were too scared) went to the tomb to carry out some of the burial rites associated with their faith. When they got there, the massive stone sealing the tomb was moved. They were met by two men1 who told them that He (the one they were looking for) was not there. He had risen just as he promised. What followed over the next few weeks was a series of meetings between Jesus and his followers. In ones and twos, in groups of a dozen or more and on at least one occasion to over 500 people.

This is the crux of the problem: if this resurrection is true then everything about Christianity is true. Prove that Jesus didn’t rise from the grave then you prove that all the claims of Christianity are untrue. Flip this over though and you realise this; if you prove that Jesus did rise from the grave then you prove that all the claims of Christianity are true.

The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus relies mainly on four documents. These are the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I do not have time here to explain the strengths and weaknesses of these as source of evidence (I will try to do so at a later date). I will say though, that the records we have from these four men (as well as the circumstantial evidence) is at least as strong as, and probably stronger than, any evidence we have from the same period and even later concerning other events and people. (I will point out here that many people who criticise the resurrection of Christ will often claim that there are only two gospels as Matthew and Luke are based on Mark and therefore one must count them as the same source but I disagree with this and will attempt to explain why in a later piece of writing). Nobody seriously distrusts what we have learned from the ancient sources about Julius Caesar do they? If we remember the two rules of good history then we will realise that an open mind is needed with these sources. We cannot dismiss them because they are in the Bible. Whatever we think about that book, we must remember that it is a valid source for us and worthy of study.

So, looking at the evidence, we are left with two possible options about the tomb. Either Jesus was in the tomb or he was not. There is no third possibility. What I would like to do is examine the different theories that have been put forward to try and answer which was true. After each one I will offer my own summary and I will end with the theory which, after much study, I decided was the truth.

First, and easiest to dismiss is the idea that the whole thing was a fabrication. Rare as it is amongst scholars, some people genuinely claim that there was no crucifixion, no death, no tomb, no resurrection and therefore no truth to the gospel claims. This of course is ridiculous. Nobody seriously denies the death of Jesus on the cross. It is incomprehensible to believe that this was the case. The disciples who died for their faith died for something that they knew was a lie? Impossible. Perhaps this is not the most surgical analysis of the argument but it doesn't deserve much space. If there was a death (which of course there was) then we are still left with either a filled tomb or an empty tomb.

One of the most prevalent filled tomb theories is that the disciples and everybody else was mistaken because Jesus was thrown into an unmarked mass grave. Professor Guignebert suggests in Jesus published in New York in 1956, that ‘It is more likely to have been cast into the pit for the executed than laid in a new tomb’3 The evidence for this is not very convincing and it’s quite likely that is is based on the assumption that the crucified were thrown into a mass grave. However, in 1968 the body of a man in a family tomb who had been clearly crucified was discovered. I am sure that he was not the only one. Moreover, this theory clearly ignores the Gospel narratives. Here we see that Joseph of Arimathea  took the body and laid it in his own tomb. Not a mass grave but a fresh and individual tomb. Even if the disciples of Jesus didn’t know where he was buried Joseph did. Even more convincingly, a whole group of people did know where the body was. The Romans stationed a guard at the tomb. They didn’t think Jesus was buried in an unknown tomb. This theory does not hold water. It fails to take into account all of the evidence.

Another similar one is the idea that the women and the disciples went to the wrong tomb. There are clues in the Bible narrative. After all the man that the women speak to in one of the accounts even points to the right grave (Mark 16:6 ‘see the place were he was laid’). The argument goes that there were lots of tombs in the area and the women were in no fit state to go to the right one, so distraught were they. It is likely that they were not close when they watched and after all, Joseph of Arimathea was a representative of the Sanhedrin and not the disciples. This theory is another one that ignores lots of the evidence. The accounts in the Gospels do not really suggest this at all, the women are clearly watching closely but again, how many tombs have a Roman guard posted outside? Moreover, if any theory was ever to be based on a preconception it is this one. The use of the fact that the women were told ‘see the place he was laid’ omits the part of that verse which states ‘He has risen’ Were one to believe this theory, we would have to accept that everybody went to the wrong tomb. The women did, the disciples did, the Sanhedrin did, the Romans did and the Roman guard who was not there at the time the women originally went came back to the wrong tomb. It’s just utterly implausible.

Perhaps what we have are legends. Perhaps the stories of Jesus rising from the grave were made up many years and generations later. This is perhaps the most leaky of all the theories. We can reliably date the Gospels to no later than fifty years after the crucifixion of Jesus. This might be enough time some would argue but the gospels are not the earliest account of the crucifixion in the Bible. In 1 Corinthians, which can be dated to about 20 years after Jesus was crucified, St Paul mentions that he had been told even earlier about the risen Jesus and that there were about 500 people still alive to whom he had appeared after the burial. Some of these would have been able to refute Paul’s statements. We do not have any such refutations and whilst the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (as so many atheists have been fond of telling me in discussions about this topic) it is a perfectly acceptable historiographical leap to make to assume that no such refutations exist.

Amongst those who accept that there was a resurrection of Jesus, there are some who argue that there was a resurrection of Jesus but that the body remained in the tomb. This piece of double-think rests on an assumption that we are dealing with a Hellenistic world. The Jews expected a physical resurrection. The Greeks thought that they would live on after death but in some spiritual form, the soul would continue and the body would rot away in the ground. This theory doesn’t hold water either. It is demolished as soon as one looks at the post resurrection appearances of Jesus. The women grab his feet, the disciples touch the holes in his body and he eats fish with his friends. These are not things that mere spirits do. There was undoubtedly a physical resurrection.

All of these theories mentioned so far are fairly common but they pale into insignificance when we consider the last of the occupied tomb theories. This is the most common and it simply sates that those people who saw Jesus after the crucifixion were hallucinating. Here we must leave my realm of expertise but the evidence does somewhat speak for itself. Psychiatrists describe an hallucination as ‘ a false sensory perception in the absence of an actual external stimulus’. What makes this theory weak is that usually only certain types of person have hallucinations. It is usually only paranoid or schizophrenics who are most susceptible to them. In the New Testament accounts of the resurrection appearances we have a number of different types of people, they cannot all have been susceptible to hallucinations. Secondly, hallucinations are intensely personal and they cannot be shared between crowds of people and certainly not among 500 people at a time. Added to this, hallucinations do not subject themselves to a physical inspection as Jesus did. Hallucinations are usually kept to certain times and places but the (at least) fifteen appearances of Jesus after the crucifixion happened in different places, at different times of day and to different people4. Finally, this theory ignores several of the import facts in the story. The broken seal, the guards at the tomb and the subsequent actions of the High Priests. (I will point out here that some might argue that the disciples and everyone else were tricked in some way, which is somewhat of a disservice as it assumes the people of the First Century were more gullible than the enlightened ones of today, something I have never seen any evidence of).

So the arguments that Jesus’ body never left the tomb do not seem to be very convincing. They simply cannot explain the guarded tomb or the fact that people physically saw Jesus. The evidence to a sound historian would seem to point to the fact that the tomb was empty. How, then, can we explain away the empty tomb?

As an aside, there is another fact that would help us to confirm what I have just said. We need to remember always that the Jewish leaders never produced the body of Jesus. These men were consummate political animals who knew just how to handle the Roman authorities. Instead of using evidence to prove the disciples wrong, they instead brought them (forcibly) in front of the council and threatened them with death if they did not stop preaching the resurrected Jesus. They didn’t stop preaching it, despite some of their number being thrown from roofs, crucified and stoned.

And so to the ideas that the tomb was empty but that Jesus did not leave it under his own power. The first of these, and one of the most prevalent is the idea that the disciples stole the body. This theory is even in the Bible. The Sanhedrin approached PIlate because they fear the body will be stolen. When the body does disappear the guards are told by the Jewish authorities to say that the disciples stole the body. This is a story which still has a good deal of currency. However, there are several major weaknesses in this theory. Firstly, the theory suggests that a frightened and weak bunch of men could overpower guards from one of the most efficient fighting machines in history. The Roman guards are very unlikely to have been bested by such men. Moreover, the record does not say that the disciples did steal the body. Rather it says that the Jewish authorities told the guards to say this. Why would they make up such a story unless the body was absent from the tomb? There is even circumstantial evidence to pooh-pooh this theory. The disciples were transformed by the rising of Christ. They became men willing to stand in public and preach something that they knew could lead to their deaths. Of all the 12 disciples (including Matthias the replacement for Judas Iscariot) all but one died a violent death for their belief in the risen Christ. Human nature is such that men seldom die for what they know is a lie. They may die for a lie but that is often because they do not know it is a lie. Had the disciples stolen the body of Jesus then they would have known that he was not alive. They would have been acting under a lie. They would not have suffered such torture and persecution without abjuring their faith. Their loud proclamation of the resurrected Jesus puts paid to the theory that the disciples stole the body.

Without wishing to sound hyperbolic and trying to keep an open mind we reach what most historians consider the most ridiculous theory of them all. This is the idea that Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross, no he just swooned and later, having been revived by the coolness of the tomb walked out alive. This has been thoroughly debunked. History knows of only three men who survived a Roman crucifixion and they were given the best treatment available at the time which still led to their deaths shortly after. Jesus was not taken down from the cross and treated. This man had been flogged and beaten. He was too weak to carry his own cross and was probably suffering from hypovolemic shock before the nails were driven through him. Crucifixion was the cruelest of punishments. Our word excruciating comes from the same root, the pain was dreadful and it was a most effective punishment. Nobody survived being crucified.

And yet, some people argue that Jesus did just that. The evidence within the sources does not support this theory in the slightest. The Roman guards who carried out the execution knew that Jesus was dead. They were experienced in this and they had seen enough men die this terrible death. They were not to be fooled by Jesus swooning. Pilate knew that he was dead as well. When the body was asked for by Joseph of Arimathea, Pilate did not give it to him until after the confirmation had been given by the centurion. Finally the Sanhedrin themselves knew that he was dead. They would not have let him off the cross had he been alive, they wanted him dead. Moreover, when they asked Pilate to place a guard at the tomb they said ‘when he was alive’ suggesting that they knew he was dead. So, it was well known and is well evidenced that Jesus Christ left that cross as a dead body.

Added in to all of this is the fact that Jesus must have then been so recovered from the beating and the flogging and the crucifixion itself to have moved a large stone blocking the tomb he was laid in (see the earlier part about the fact that he was in a known tomb). This man must then have gone on to overpower a Roman guard and then appeared to his disciples and others as a man who was victorious over death. Are we to suppose that this bloodied, beaten, devastated man looked victorious when he appeared to his disciples?This is, to put it mildly, a ridiculous idea. The Jesus described by this theory is not the Jesus met by any of those who said they met him after the crucifixion. This Jesus would have been a horrible man, broken and in pain. This is the Jesus who never existed.

There is an updated version of this theory. Some people have argued that there was a plot between Jesus (or at least his key disciples) and Pilate. Pilate was a fan of Jesus and would not have wanted to execute someone advocating support of the Roman Empire. Jesus had said that taxes needed to be paid to Caesar and this was important to Pilate5. So, the idea is that Jesus was given a poison which made it appear as if he were dead on the cross and then taken down. Later, he was placed in the tomb and given care and attention and was brought back ‘from the dead’ and shown off. Quite apart from the weakness of the theory, the evidence simply doesn’t support it. The soldiers knew Jesus was dead. The body was still flogged and beaten and the spear in Jesus’ side showed the effects of death on the body6. The idea that the Romans wouldn’t want to execute one of their supporters is simply wrong. They often did so. Jesus was annoying to Pilate because of his difficulties with the Jewish authorities and this outweighed any potential benefits from allowing him to continue with his taxation policies.

All of this brings us to the end of the theories about the resurrection of Jesus. Approaching the evidence with an open mind led me to a startling discovery. The tomb was empty and there was no natural explanation as to why it was so. This was where I found the biggest problem. I could not accept that there was a supernatural explanation because those things just don’t happen. Dead bodies stay dead. However, I went back through what I had studied and I realised that there was a problem with my conclusion. It lay in the statement that supernatural explanations are impossible. This was not an open mind. I had to look at this and realise that even if I didn’t like it, a supernatural explanation must be possible. To deny this is to close a mind to one possible explanation. It’s still extremely unlikely but it’s possible.

Thus, I ended up knowing that there was no natural explanation of the empty tomb. Nothing could put Jesus back in there and that meant that the answer lay in the realm of the supernatural. The Jesus who left the tomb was alive and well and had been raised from the dead. This was an immense discovery and catapulted me into a decision. If the resurrection was true then there was no logical reason to disbelieve anything that Jesus said or did. The evidence was clear, Jesus said that he was the only way to God and he proved this with his death on the cross. When he died on that wooden cross so many years ago it should have been me. It was all my sin that nailed him there. It was my fault. He was clearing the way for me to get to God. He paid the price so that I could get into heaven. All I had to do was accept this decision and accept the free gift of this salvation. On a dreary day in February of 1997 I did so. There were no angelic choirs, the world didn’t suddenly become brighter and my struggles most certainly didn’t end that day but I can honestly say that from that day to this I have known God’s presence and his comfort. I have known that what Jesus did for me he also did for everybody else. Not because He had to but because He wanted to. Greater love has no one than this: that he lays down his life for his friends.