The entire Christian faith hinges on one question. Did Jesus Christ rise from the dead? If He did, then the Christian faith is true at its foundation. Individual pieces of doctrine would still be up for debate, but the most basic tenet of the Christian faith would be truthful. If Christ was not resurrected, however, then the entirety of the Christian faith is based on a lie. The souls of billions are on the line with this question. The debate over the Resurrection has arguably the highest stakes in existence.
When it comes to the question of whether or not the Resurrection occurred, the Christian Bible has often been dismissed as a legitimate source of evidence. Indeed, the New Testament cannot be the sole source used to answer the question of whether or not Christ rose from the dead, but it is just as legitimate a source as any other ancient document. Without the Bible, historians would have no idea where to begin looking for proof to confirm or deny the Resurrection.
The Bible records names of individuals, dates and locations that can be scoured for evidence. From there, the historical record can be examined for indications that Christ did or did not rise from the dead. Thankfully for Christians, the historical record often favors faith. Here are six historical arguments supporting the Resurrection of Jesus.
Records confirm He was crucified and died.
Rising from the dead requires that the person is actually dead. Some skeptics argue that Christ never actually died, and thus, the Resurrection was merely Jesus healing or coming out of hiding. This idea, however, is almost impossible to uphold. Non-Christian sources confirm that there was a man named Jesus who came from Nazareth and was believed by His followers to be the Christ. Pontius Pilate in Judea then killed this man. Among those sources are the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman senator Tacitus, both of whom are considered some of the most reliable sources for first-century events. Both Josephus and Tacitus lived either at the same time or within less than a century of Christ’s life. There are also letters between Roman governor Pliny and Emperor Trajan that confirm the existence and zealotry of the early Church as well as early Christian beliefs.
The existence of Pontius Pilate has also been repeatedly proven both in textual sources and in inscriptions found by archaeologists, despite some skeptics claiming that he was not a real man. There has also been enough evidence uncovered over the decades for historians and scholars to reconstruct what happened during a Roman crucifixion. The consensus among historians, scholars and medical professionals is effectively unanimous: surviving a full Roman crucifixion was impossible. The method of execution was so brutal that many people died during the scourging and never even reached the cross itself. Records also show that crucifixions were relatively common in first-century Israel, which had been a hotbed of rebellion and an almost ceaseless source of trouble for Rome. A potential Messiah would have been far too great a threat for Rome to leave alive. Indeed, the revolt Rome was so concerned about broke out a mere 30 years after Christ’s death.
He was buried, and His tomb was empty.
Since the beginning, the Christian faith has hinged on the idea that Christ rose from the dead and rose in the fashion that the Jews believed in, that is, an actual physical resurrection. Were the Resurrection a myth, it would have been painfully easy for Roman and Jewish authorities to disprove. All they needed to do was display Christ’s dead body on the fourth day, and the Christian religion would have been killed in the crib.
Christ’s execution was extremely public. People knew He died, and both Christian and Jewish sources show that followers and enemies of Christ alike knew the location of His tomb. Evidence also implies that the tomb was empty. Once again, had Christ’s body been in the tomb, killing the Christian movement would have been easy. The fact that it flourished shows that the tomb was empty. If the women mentioned in the New Testament simply went to the wrong tomb, as some skeptics suggest, it would have been simple for authorities to point believers to the correct tomb. Beyond that, early Jewish polemic against the young Christian religion involves claims that the Apostles stole the body, implying that the tomb was empty.
Some skeptics claim that, as an executed criminal, Christ would never have been given a tomb to begin with. The bodies of many crucified criminals were indeed left to rot on the crosses as a warning to all who saw them, but this was not always the case. A Jewish ossuary from roughly a century before Christ’s death was found to contain the bones of a crucified man. In fact, one of the crucifixion nails was still embedded in his heel bone, and the nail itself had slivers of olive wood stuck to it. Whoever the man was, he had been crucified but was still given an honorable Jewish burial. There is no reason that Christ would not have been given the same treatment, especially when Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin and a high-ranking man of Jerusalem, requested Jesus’ body.
Women were the first witnesses.
First-century Israel was overwhelmingly patriarchal. Men were in charge of all areas of political, social, and religious life. Women were second-class citizens. Their treatment may have been better in Israel than in many other places in the ancient world, but that does not mean that they ever saw anything even remotely approaching equality. Despite this fact, the first people to learn of the Resurrection were women. Each of the Gospels agrees on this fact. Women saw the risen Christ or heard from the angel that He rose from the dead long before the male disciples did. From a first-century perspective, this is beyond embarrassing. Not only did the men abandon their God, but they were not even the first ones that He appeared to when He returned. Instead, the men had to find out about it from the women.
This would be not unlike a person today who had campaigned steadily to become mayor, had all the necessary qualifications and had spent years serving in other political capacities being passed over in favor of the illiterate and brain-damaged clown who threw their name in the ring three days before the election. In short, it looks about as bad as possible for the disciples that women found out first, and no one likes to tell stories that paint them in an unflattering light. If the Gospels were lies created by the Apostles, they would not have included this detail unless they had a sword at their throats. Even then, they might have decided a quick death was preferable to the abject humiliation of being passed over in favor of women.
The Gospels agree on the core story but disagree on secondary details.
Skeptics love to make a big deal about how the details of the Gospels do not agree with each other when it comes to the Resurrection. The Synoptic Gospels claim that the women came to the tomb in the morning or at dawn. John says it was still dark. Matthew says there were two women. Luke claims there were more than three. Mark states that there was one angel at the tomb. John says there were two.
It is possible to reconcile many of the differences between the Resurrection accounts. Matthew, after all, never specifically says there were only two women and near dawn, it is often still very dark outside. Although it is good that Christians can fit the Gospels together, the minor differences in details actually make the Gospels more believable. If four witnesses to a crime gave precisely the same story in court, including details such as what color shoes the accused was wearing, people would understandably be suspicious that the witnesses collaborated and agreed on a specific story before the trial.
The truth is that people notice and remember different things. As such, the fact that the four Gospels have slightly different accounts implies that they were all written separately instead of taken from a single source. This means that rather than one source in four places that points to the authenticity of the Resurrection, four sources claim the same thing happened. When four witnesses claim that a man murdered someone, people tend to believe them even if the four disagree on what color shirt he was wearing. Why should the same not be true of four accounts of Christ’s Resurrection?
The Bible mentions specific, still-living people by name.
There are over 3,200 people who are listed by name in the Bible. Clearly, the writers of the Bible had no issue with naming names, and at the time the New Testament was written, many of the people referenced in the books were still alive. People who had seen the risen Christ were referenced by name. Those who had been at His crucifixion were specifically identified. The writers of the Gospels and various Epistles were practically daring readers to confirm their stories. Just as with the empty tomb, the Christian movement could have potentially been killed off by supposed eyewitnesses simply denying that they had ever seen anything at all. It would, admittedly, be far more difficult for a Greek reader to reach an eyewitness in Jerusalem at that time then than it is today, but that does not mean that it was impossible to corroborate stories. Phoebe traveled more than 700 miles to deliver one of Paul’s epistles to Rome. A serious skeptic could certainly have traveled from Samaria to Jerusalem to speak with someone who claimed to have spoken to the risen Christ.
It is for this exact reason that those who study the creation and spread of folklore and legends agree that the Gospels were written too early for them to be legendary. Legends have to wait until all the eyewitnesses are dead to begin to spread truly. Otherwise, some too many people can and will contradict the more extraordinary details. This can actually be seen in later apocryphal books that add additional and more traditionally legendary details surrounding the Resurrection of Christ. They involve angels descending, Christ exiting the tomb, bathed in light and appearing in all His glory to those who condemned Him. The canonical Gospels, on the other hand, tell a rather simple tale. The women went to the tomb, saw it was empty and were told by an angel in the form of a man that Christ was risen from the dead. If one were to create a legend, a little more excitement would have been added to the most important scene in all of human history.
Christians suffered and died rather than recant.
Early Christians rapidly gained a well-earned reputation for being almost alarmingly zealous. They were not attacking others as the Jewish zealots did during the Maccabean Revolt or the First Jewish-Roman War, but early Christians were seen as approaching fanatical. Even when facing torture and death, they continued to insist that a man no one had heard of from a tiny town in a backwater country that was nothing but trouble had somehow come back to life and saved the world. The story seemed ridiculous to the Romans, but it spread with terrifying speed, and those who believed it earned their reputation for refusing to give up on their beliefs no matter what authorities threatened to do to them. Some Christians folded in the face of torture, but many, far too many in concerned Roman eyes, continued to insist that an executed Galilean carpenter was God.
Contrary to what many modern Christians believe, early Christians were not just the poor and the refuse of society. Many early Christians were the ancient equivalent of middle or upper class. It was these Christians who were able to help finance the disciples’ travels and keep ancient churches running smoothly. Paul himself would have been a person of means in the ancient world. He was a Pharisee, a Roman citizen and the student of a highly respected Jewish scholar. He had an overwhelming amount to lose by converting to Christianity. Indeed, his conversion eventually cost him his life, but Paul never hesitated. Neither did many other early Christians. Gentiles risked losing their homes, their lives and the lives of their families. Jews abandoned the traditions that had survived numerous invasions and at least two exiles. Christians of every background clung to their beliefs under the worst of Roman tortures. People do not take such extreme actions for things they know or suspect to be lies. There might be the odd individual who would continue a charade to pull one over on the Romans even in death, but there are far too many Christian martyrs to explain away in this manner.
Skeptics have thrown down the gauntlet for centuries. Both believers and nonbelievers are well aware of the fact that the largest faith on the planet hinges on a single event that happened more than two millenniums ago. If the Resurrection can be disproven, the entire Christian faith collapses. As such, skeptics and Christians alike have dug furiously into the historical record in order to find proof to uphold their side of the argument. Although skeptics and believers continue to debate whether or not Christ was truly raised from the dead, skeptics face something of an uphill battle. History certainly seems to favor the idea that Jesus Christ really rose from the dead and left behind an empty tomb, a burial cloth, and a group of men and women who truly believed.
