The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth That Even Non-Christian Scholars Believe

[Author’s Note:  If you have any non-Christian or skeptical relatives or friends, I strongly encourage you to share this info with them—especially at Easter time.  God bless you!]

Last revised on 3-31-24

 

“This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.” —Peter, the Apostle (Acts 2:32)

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received:  that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the Twelve.  After that, He appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now [in other words, “If you don’t believe me, there are hundreds of other living eyewitnesses still available whom you can interview; be my guest!”], but some have fallen asleep.  Then, He appeared to James; then, to all the apostles . . . and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.

“For I am the least of the apostles and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain.  But I labored even more than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God with me.  Whether, then, it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed.” —Paul, the Apostle (1 Corinthians 15:3–11)

 

Prologue

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is THE central doctrine of Christianity—the very foundation and heart of the Gospel message. 

If Jesus of Nazareth did not rise physically from the dead, then He is not God, His words cannot be trusted, everything He claimed and taught is ultimately meaningless, and humanity has no hope of salvation from evil, suffering, death, and the deserved wrath of an absolutely just and holy God on Judgment Day.  

On the other hand, if Jesus did rise physically from the dead, then He is God, He is the single most trustworthy person of all time, everything He claimed and taught is true and of supreme significance for all mankind, and He is humanity’s only hope of salvation from evil, suffering, death, and the deserved wrath of an absolutely just and holy God on Judgment Day.  

That is how much is at stake here, so there better be good reasons to believe Jesus’ resurrection actually occurred in history.  But is there any historical evidence for the Resurrection?

It may surprise you to learn that the vast majority of reputable and credentialed New Testament critical scholars and historians today, from across the ideological and theological spectrum — that is, from very conservative Christians to radically liberal skeptics (i.e., atheists, agnostics, and so forth) — agree upon more than 20 historical facts concerning the person of Jesus of Nazareth and the evidences for His resurrection. 

For your consideration, 13 of these historical facts are presented in this article.  I invite you to examine this data thoughtfully and with an open mind (i.e., don’t rule out the existence of God, the reliability of the Bible, or the possibility of miracles in advance), as well as with a sincere commitment to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

 

A Brief Word on Why Skeptics Should Give the 4 Gospel Testimonies the Benefit of the Doubt

In this age of hyper skepticism and general incredulity toward religion, especially Christianity, the default position of many thinkers today is to dismiss the Gospel accounts — which, important to note, comprise the best historical data available to us about the person known as Jesus of Nazareth — as untrustworthy, a priori (i.e., prior to examining them), which is something they would never do with the writings of secular historians. 

One of the reasons usually given for this knee-jerk cynicism is that the Gospels were, in fact, written by Christians and must, therefore, be automatically rejected as unreliable due to the personal biases of the Gospel authors in favor of Christ.  [Note:  What’s often overlooked here is an historical criterion known as the “principle of embarrassment,” which is to say that the Gospel authors also reported many facts about Jesus that appear to cast Him and themselves in a negative light — that is, details which are embarrassing, awkward, controversial, and otherwise disadvantageous and/or self-damaging to the authors as well as to Jesus’ other followers, which further lends credence to the honesty and transparency of the Gospel writers’ testimonies.] 

Another reason for distrusting the Gospels is that all four books contain reports of miracles, and that fact alone is enough to chase away most readers whose worldview will not permit the possibility of divine “interference” with the laws of nature.  Apparently, it never occurs to such prejudiced minds that a devoted and faithful pupil and servant of Jesus might, naturally, have greater motivation than anyone else to record the facts about his beloved Master as accurately as possible — and all the more so when the writer in question had nothing to gain and everything to lose by reporting the exact truthfulness of what he witnessed or what he gleaned from interviews with eyewitnesses, as was assuredly the situation with the New Testament authors (continue reading to discover why this is true).  That factor would seem to elevate the credibility of the four Gospel testimonies even higher.

Neither does it ever seem to occur to skeptics that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John describe the miraculous signs and wonders of Jesus with the same simple, straightforward, “matter-of-fact” language they employ when commenting, for example, that Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea or that Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee during the reign of Tiberius Caesar.  The Gospels are replete with social, cultural, geographical, and political truth claims that have been externally corroborated by historical and archaeological research, and none which have ever been disproved.  Furthermore, virtually all the writings of ancient Greek and Roman historians also contain reports of miracles, prophecies, and other supernatural elements, yet most scholars accept the basic historical reliability of these considerably lesser-attested works, without reservation.  Why not give the Gospels the same benefit of the doubt?

Having said that, I’m now going to defer respectfully and gratefully to the immensely superior knowledge of the eminent Simon Greenleaf.  If you’re not familiar with that name, I think you should be.  Dr. Greenleaf stands as one of the most preeminent legal scholars of all time.  In addition to being one of the founders of Harvard Law School, where he served as Professor of Law from 1833 to 1848, and to serving as an associate of Justice Joseph Story for 14 years, Greenleaf also published a three-volume work on the rules of legal evidence titled A Treatise on the Law of Evidence, which came to be received as an authoritative text in all English and American tribunals. 

Of greater interest to me and the topic at hand, however, is another of Greenleaf’s most respected publications:  The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence.  As the book’s title suggests, Greenleaf, who began his investigation as an unbeliever, subjects the data reported in the four canonical Gospel accounts to rigorous cross-examination, applying the same rules of evidence administered in courts of justice to ascertain both the personal integrity of the Gospel writers as well as the historical trustworthiness of their statements.  In so doing, he persuasively demonstrates that the independent, eyewitness testimonies of separate historians Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — including the information they report about the Resurrection — would, unquestionably, be admissible in a modern court of law as credible, factual evidence.  [Note:  Nancy Kippenhan of the Liberty University School of Law has shown here that Greenleaf’s arguments remain true even in 21st-century courts of law.]  More than that, the initially skeptical Dr. Greenleaf himself concluded that Christ’s resurrection from the dead was indeed an historical fact.

In this same book, Dr. Greenleaf reasonably requests that skeptics give the Gospel witnesses the same “fair hearing” that they would readily give the works of other ancient writers.  To any readers who have misgivings or suspicions regarding the Gospel records, I exhort you to heed his words carefully (emphasis mine):  

“In the absence of circumstances which generate suspicion, every witness is to be presumed credible, until the contrary is shown; the burden of impeaching his credibility lying on the objector.”

This rule serves to show the injustice with which the writers of the Gospels have ever been treated by infidels—an injustice silently acquiesced in even by Christians—in requiring the Christian affirmatively, and by positive evidence, to establish the credibility of his witnesses above all others before their testimony is entitled to be considered, and in permitting the testimony of a single profane [i.e., secular] writer — alone and uncorroborated — to outweigh that of any single Christian. . . . But the Christian writer seems, by the usual course of the argument, to have been deprived of the common presumption of charity in his favor; and reversing the ordinary rule of administering justice in human tribunals, [the Christian’s] testimony is unjustly presumed to be false, until it is proved to be true.  [Note:  This is completely backwards!] 

This treatment, moreover, has been applied to them all [i.e., to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John] in a body; and, without due regard to the fact that — being independent historians, writing at different periods, they are entitled to the support of each other — they have been treated, in the argument, almost as if the New Testament were the entire production, at once, of a body of men, conspiring by a joint fabrication to impose a false religion upon the world.  It is time that this injustice should cease; that [1] the testimony of the evangelists [i.e., the distinct historical biographies/narratives authored by contemporaries Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John] should be admitted to be true until it can be disproved by those who would impugn it; that [2] the silence of one sacred writer on any point [e.g., Luke did not write about Jesus’ changing water to wine at Cana of Galilee, but John the Apostle did; and John did not mention that Jesus perspired drops of blood at Gethsemane (a rare but established medical phenomenon known as hematidrosis), but Luke the physician did] should no more detract from his own veracity OR that of the other historians, than the like circumstance is permitted to do among profane [secular] writers; and that [3] the Four Evangelists should be admitted in corroboration of each other, as readily as Josephus and Tacitus, or Polybius and Livy.          

 

A Brief Word on the Significance of Early Christian Creeds

Paul’s core Gospel summary in the 15th chapter of First Corinthians (a.k.a. “The Resurrection Chapter”) is truly amazing, because it contains an ancient creed, or confessional statement, that even theologically liberal (i.e., non-Christian) New Testament critical scholars (e.g., atheists Gerd Lüdemann and Bart Ehrman) date to within one to three years of Jesus’ death.  In fact, some scholars (e.g., James D.G. Dunn and Walter Kasper) believe the data in the first seven verses of this particular passage can be dated to within a few months of Jesus’ crucifixion, while at least one New Testament scholar (i.e., skeptic Larry W. Hurtado of the infamous “Jesus Seminar”) dates it even earlier still to within days of Jesus’ death!

Early Christian creeds (from the Latin word credo, meaning “I believe”) such as this one are concise, catchy, memorable statements of belief or “sermon summaries” that were transmitted orally, often in song or hymn form, until they became standardized.  In a predominantly illiterate culture, as the ancient Near East was, creeds could be recited by heart even by people who couldn’t write their own name. 

[Note:  Every person reading this can remember songs you learned before you could read and write, as well as innumerable popular songs and church hymns you learned by ear/heart without ever actually seeing the lyrics.  One that immediately comes to my mind is “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” or “The Alphabet Song,” both of which use the same tune or melody.  In full disclosure, to this day, I still recall “The Alphabet Song” and sing it in my mind every single time I alphabetize anything!  Obviously, setting words to catchy, memorable melodies is a powerfully effective way of transmitting and internalizing ideas.  The ancient Jewish people understood this better than most, and they mastered the art.] 

The Bible is actually filled with dozens of these incredible creedal statements, and they are extremely important in substantiating the authenticity, early dating, and historical reliability of the New Testament.  The reason is that these creeds were originally formulated some 20 years before a single page of the New Testament was written, which means that the doctrinal beliefs they codify date all the way back to the months, weeks, and days following Jesus’ death and resurrection.

As Dr. Gary Habermas has written:

“Paul probably received this report [i.e., the creedal data he relays in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7] from Peter and James while visiting Jerusalem within a few years of his conversion.  [Note:  Cf. Galatians 1:13–24, where Saul of Tarsus/Paul spent 15 days with the Apostles Peter and James, the latter of whom is Jesus’ half brother].  The vast majority of critical scholars who answer the question place Paul’s reception of this material in the mid-30s A.D.  [Note:  This means the material originated even earlier than that.]  Even more skeptical scholars generally agree.  German theologian Walter Kasper even asserts that, ‘We have here, therefore, an ancient text, perhaps in use by the end of 30 A.D. …’  Ulrich Wilckens declares that the material ‘indubitably goes back to the oldest phase of all in the history of primitive Christianity.’”  [Source: “Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What Are Critical Scholars Saying?”]

 

What this tells us, specifically with regard to the 1 Corinthians 15 passage, is that the apostles and other Christians unquestionably began proclaiming the deity, atoning death by crucifixion, and bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth — the three most crucial components of the Gospel message — right from the outset in the early ’30s A.D.  Therefore, no one can credibly claim that these key Christian doctrines were legends or myths about Jesus that people invented many decades or centuries after His life.  That option is simply not tenable anymore, if it ever was in the first place.

With all that said, let’s now examine the historical-critical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection.

 

The Resurrection Evidence

According to the well-established findings of world-class scholars Dr. Gary Habermas (distinguished research professor with a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Religion from Michigan State University and the Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Theology at Liberty University), who is inarguably the premier expert on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ (note:  Gary is currently working on a 5,000-plus-page magnum opus on this subject), and renowned philosopher and debater Dr. William Lane Craig, who himself is also an expert in the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection, the vast majority of reputable and credentialed New Testament critical scholars and historians today, from across the ideological and theological spectrum — that is, from very conservative Christians to radically liberal skeptics (i.e., atheists, agnostics, and so forth, including E.P. Sanders, Bart Ehrman, and John Dominic Crossan of the notorious “Jesus Seminar”) — accept as historically true (with a few exceptions, noted below) the following facts from the first century concerning the person of Jesus of Nazareth:

Fact #1:  Jesus of Nazareth was a real person of history.

This fact is a “no-brainer” and, with very few exceptions, is only disputed by unscholarly and intellectually dishonest conspiracy theorists who have not been specially trained in either New Testament studies or ancient Greco-Roman or Jewish history.  Most of these individuals, who make a lot of empty noise on the Internet/social media, also have a militant pre-commitment to atheism and philosophical naturalism and are biased against all things supernatural, miraculous, and theistic.  Legitimate scholars, including ones who identify as atheists or agnostics, don’t take these people seriously.  In fact, Dr. Bart Ehrman, a well-known atheist and credentialed historian who specializes in New Testament textual criticism and the historical Jesus — and who basically makes a living trying to discredit biblical Christianity — actually wrote a book in which he vigorously defends the historicity of Jesus; and in it, he strongly reprimands the extreme skeptics and mythicists who deny Jesus’ historical existence.

In addition to the plentiful extra-biblical attestation we have from the independent, first- and second-century writings of the early church fathers to Jesus’ historicity, several independent, non-Christian, non-biblical writers also affirmed the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth within 150 years of His life, including the basic details of His ministry and death, as well as the beginnings of the Christian Church.  Some of these secular sources, several of whom were critics and/or hostile enemies of Christianity, include the following:

Josephus (the most important Jewish historian of the 1st century A.D.), Tacitus (the most important and arguably the best Roman/Gentile historian of the 1st and early 2nd centuries A.D.), Pliny the Younger (Roman politician of the mid-1st and early 2nd centuries A.D.), Phlegon (a 2nd-century freed slave of Roman Emperor Hadrian who wrote histories), Suetonius (Roman historian of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries A.D.), Lucian of Samosata (a 2nd-century Greek satirist who mocked Christians), Celsus (2nd-century anti-Christian Greek philosopher), and Mara Bar-Serapion (a Syrian prisoner of Rome who wrote a private letter to his son sometime between the late first and early third centuries, although most scholars date the letter to A.D. 73).

[Note:  For deeper study into the ancient non-biblical evidence for the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, watch this video.]

Counting both Christian and non-Christian sources, Drs. Gary Habermas and Michael Licona found that Jesus of Nazareth is referenced by at least 42 independent authors before the close of the 2nd century, nine of whom were eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life and/or contemporaries of the events recorded in the New Testament.  

To put this in perspective, consider that only 10 total ancient sources reference Tiberius Caesar, the Roman emperor at the time of Christ’s death, within the same 150-year time frame.

Moreover, as author and historian John Dickson, who holds a Ph.D. in Ancient History, informs readers in his article “Most Australians May Doubt That Jesus Existed, but Historians Don’t,” whatever popular cultural opinion may be, the idea that Jesus of Nazareth never existed is, itself, practically mythical within the circles of professional secular historical scholarship.  He points out that the most trusted reference works found in the personal libraries of all classicists and serious scholars of ancient history — such as the Oxford Classical Dictionary, Cambridge Ancient History, and Cambridge History of Judaism — all feature voluminous information establishing the historical authenticity of the person, teachings, and works of Christ, as well as many additional claims of the New Testament writers.  “There is a reason for this consensus,” Dickson explains.  “When you apply the normal rules of history to Jesus of Nazareth, this figure is plainly a historical one, not a mythical one.  The early and diverse sources we have put his existence (and much more) beyond reasonable doubt.  Perhaps only 49 percent of Australians [according to one survey] reckon ‘Jesus was a real person,’ but I wager that 99 percent of professional ancient historians — atheist, Christian, Jewish, or whatever — would agree with this minority view [i.e., that Jesus was a real person of history].”    

Furthermore, in his remarkable investigative masterpiece Person of Interest: Why Jesus Still Matters in a World That Rejects the Bible, former atheist and cold-case homicide detective J. Warner Wallace carefully and cogently demonstrates through meticulous documentation, minutely detailed hand-drawn illustrations, and copious annotations that even if there weren’t a single copy of the Bible — or even so much as a manuscript fragment of the New Testament — still in existence anywhere in the world, we could still confidently reconstruct the central details about the life, character, nature, ministry, miracles, teachings, deity, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth simply by observing His absolutely unparalleled and uniquely inspiring impact on nearly every aspect of world history and the collective imagination and creative output of the human race from the time Jesus lived to the present. 

Specifically, by looking merely at Jesus’ towering influence in the areas of literature (obviously including the writings of Christians from ancient to modern times but also the even more pervasive writings of secular authors, novelists, poets, playwrights, songwriters, screenwriters, biographers, researchers, editors, columnists, lexicographers, encyclopedists, etc.), science (including the founders of every branch of modern science, the vast majority of whom were Christians who rightly understood the discipline of science to be a means of worshiping and learning more about the Creator God, and many of whom wrote extensively about the Bible, Christian theology, and the person of Jesus of Nazareth), education (including the oldest libraries, monasteries, public schools, and universities throughout the world whose founding charters and buildings are replete with plaques, monuments, statues, etc., featuring quotes from the New Testament and sundry other references to Christ and the Gospel message), non-Christian religions/worldviews (i.e., the sacred texts of competing religions throughout the world and statements from their spiritual leaders give us enough information to piece together all of the most important details about Jesus Christ without the need for a Bible), and every conceivable category of the Arts (e.g., architecture, painting, sculpting, graphic design, music, filmmaking, etc.), Wallace makes an undeniable case that to erase the ineradicable “evidential trail” of Jesus’ historicity from this planet would itself require a miracle greater than any other!   

“There can be no other answer:  [Jesus of Nazareth] is easily the dominant figure in history. . . . [The four Gospels] agree in giving us a picture of a very definite personality; they carry a conviction of reality.  To assume that he never lived, that the accounts of his life are inventions, is more difficult and raises more problems in the path of the historian than to accept the essential elements of the Gospel stories as fact. . . . So, the historian, disregarding the theological significance of his life, writes the name of Jesus of Nazareth at the top of the list of the world’s greatest characters.  For the historian’s test of greatness is not, ‘What did he accumulate for himself?’ or, ‘What did he build up, to tumble down at his death?’  Not that at all, but this:  ‘Was the world different because he lived?  Did he start men to thinking along fresh lines with a vigor and vitality that persisted after him?’  By this test, Jesus stands first.” —Herbert George Wells, acclaimed English writer and historian who was definitely not a Christian, responding to interviewer Bruce Barton in the article “H.G. Wells Picks out the Six Greatest Men in History,” The American Magazine, Vol. 94, July 1922, pp. 13–14  

“[N]o pagans and Jews [i.e., writing in ancient times] who opposed Christianity denied Jesus’ historicity or even questioned it.” —Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, 2000, p. 15

“Despite the enormous range of opinion, there are several points on which virtually all scholars of antiquity agree:  Jesus was a Jewish man, known to be a preacher and teacher, who was crucified (a Roman form of execution) in Jerusalem during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea. . . . [Granted, it is also true] that no Greek or Roman author [writing in] the first century mentions Jesus.  It would be very convenient for us if they did, but alas, they do not.  [Note:  On this point, Tacitus and Suetonius are two examples of Roman authors who lived in the first century but who apparently didn’t write about Jesus until the early second century.]  At the same time, the fact is again a bit irrelevant since these same sources do not mention many millions of people who actually did live.  Jesus stands here with the vast majority of living, breathing human beings of earlier ages. . . . If an important Roman aristocratic ruler of a major province [i.e., Pontius Pilate] is not mentioned any more than that in the Greek and Roman writings, what are the chances that a lower-class Jewish teacher (which Jesus must have been, as everyone who thinks he lived agrees) would be mentioned in them?  Almost none. . . . It is fair to say that mythicists as a group, and as individuals, are not taken seriously by the vast majority of scholars in the field[s] of New Testament, early Christianity, ancient history, and theology. . . . The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion.  It has no ancient precedents; it was made up in the eighteenth century.  One might as well call it a modern myth — the myth of the mythical Jesus.” —Dr. Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, 2013, pp. 12, 20, 43, 45, and 96 (emphasis mine); quoted by Dr. Sean McDowell in a blog post titled “Bart Ehrman on the Existence of Jesus – Great Quotes,” dated August 11, 2015

 

Fact #2:  Jesus died by crucifixion in Jerusalem.    

This fact, considered virtually unanimously to be the most well-attested fact of the ancient world, obviously presupposes that Jesus of Nazareth truly existed in space-time history.  (After all, one must first exist before one can die, right?!) 

In fact, according to the four canonical Gospel eyewitness accounts (i.e., Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), which comprise the best and primary-source historical evidence available concerning the person of Jesus of Nazareth and which ought to be respected as such, Jesus was crucified on a Friday between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., during the same week when the annual Jewish religious festival of Passover/Feast of Unleavened Bread was being observed, and His body was removed from the Cross and then buried before the Sabbath (i.e., Saturday) officially began that same evening at sundown.  Contextually, these events had to have taken place sometime between the years A.D. 26 and A.D. 37, because it was during this period that Pontius Pilate ruled as governor of Judea. 

[Note:  According to the predominant Hebrew reckoning of time, which the Sadducees and Judeans typically followed, the start of a new day did not begin until sunset, or approximately 6 p.m. in the evening.  The Apostle John appears to have employed this sunset-to-sunset system of dating when reporting the events of Passion Week (or, arguably, he simply followed the Roman system of telling time), whereas Matthew, Mark, and Luke followed the alternative sunrise-to-sunrise system of dating, which was how the Pharisees and Galileans typically measured time and which also appears to have been the primary way that Jesus and His disciples ordinarily reckoned time.  According to the sunrise-to-sunrise system, a new day started at approximately 6 a.m. in the morning.  This would explain why the synoptists (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) view Jesus’ crucifixion as having happened on Passover Day (i.e., Friday, Nisan the 15th, according to the sunrise-to-sunrise perspective), whereas John’s account views Jesus’ death as having happened technically on the Eve of Passover (i.e., Friday, Nisan the 14th, according to the sunset-to-sunset perspective).  In short, although it can get confusing, the four Gospel writers do not contradict one another on the day or timing of Christ’s death by crucifixion; rather, they merely view it from two different perspectives of reckoning time.  All four agree that Jesus was crucified on the same day, Friday of Passover Week, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.  The calendar date differs by one number only because of the alternative systems of measuring the start of a new day.  Also keep in mind that the term “Passover” was commonly used to refer to any aspect of the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread and also that numerous meals were eaten throughout that holy festival week.]   

Fortunately, astronomical calculations have helped scholars narrow down the year and season of Jesus’ crucifixion to two possibilities within that range of years:  either the spring of A.D. 30 or the spring of A.D. 33.  (Specifically, during the aforementioned time frame of A.D. 26 to A.D. 37, John’s date of Nisan 14 for Jesus’ crucifixion, which coincided with the slaughter of the Passover lambs, fell on a Friday only in the years 30 and 33.)  For a compelling cumulative case for an April 7, A.D. 30 date for Christ’s death, see Robert Thomas and Stanley Gundry’s excellent A Harmony of the Gospels (particularly essays 10 and 11 in the appendices).  And for a powerful argument in favor of the competing date of April 3, A.D. 33, which is largely based on Oxford scientists Humphreys and Waddington’s careful analysis of lunar eclipse data from the first century, see here.  

Archaeological evidence verifying the fact that crucifixion was indeed the official method of capital punishment in first-century Rome is available here.  This evidence also confirms that the New Testament Gospel writers’ descriptions of this brutal form of execution, as well as the vicious scourging/flogging practice that usually preceded crucifixions, are entirely accurate. 

Additionally, in March/April 1986, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an extensively researched and graphically illustrated forensic medical analysis of Jesus’ physical suffering and death in which they concluded that He was assuredly dead before He was removed from the Cross — indeed, even before the spear was thrust through His side.  The authors deduced that “the actual cause of Jesus’ death, like that of other crucified victims, may have been multifactorial and related primarily to hypovolemic shock, exhaustion asphyxia, and perhaps acute heart failure.”  The full article is available for viewing and for download in PDF format here. 

Needless to say, the once popular skeptical theory that supposed that Jesus merely fainted or “swooned” on the Cross, only to be revived later by the coolness or dampness of the tomb (i.e., the “Swoon Theory”), after which He single-handedly removed the extremely large and heavy stone (which may have weighed up to 2,000 pounds) and evidently overpowered the armed soldiers guarding the tomb while He was suffering from catastrophic blood loss and traumatic wounds (not the least of which included a punctured lung and heart!), may safely be rejected as sheer nonsense.     

“Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be.” —John Dominic Crossan, radical skeptic and biblical revisionist who reportedly rejects 80% of the New Testament sayings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 1995, p. 145  

“Jesus’ death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable.” —Gerd Lüdemann, German atheist and New Testament scholar, The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology, 1994, p. 50; quoted by Jeff Pallansch in an article titled “The Historical Basis for Jesus’ Death by Crucifixion,” dated March 22, 2022

“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 ribs, probably perforated not only the right lung but also the pericardium and heart, and thereby ensured his death.  Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with modern medical knowledge.” —William D. Edwards, MD; Wesley J. Gabel, MDiv; Floyd E. Hosmer, MS, AMI; JAMA, March 21, 1986, Vol. 255, No. 11

 

Fact #3:  As a result of Jesus’ death, His disciples were grief-stricken and in a state of deep despair and hopelessness.

This fact demonstrates that none of Jesus’ followers were expecting Him to be raised from the dead.  Indeed, all of them lacked faith.  They were also forlorn and emotionally devastated.  The reason this is noteworthy is that it seems to preclude the possibility that the disciples were suffering from grief hallucination (see notes under fact #6 below to learn other reasons why the “Hallucination Theory” doesn’t work), seeing as how hallucinations generally result from significant expectation, emotional excitement, and a strong desire to see or experience someone or something.

In contrast, the disciples had personally witnessed their leader be brutally executed via crucifixion, pierced through the heart with a Roman spear to ensure He was dead, tightly bound in a hundred pounds of linen wrappings and spices, and sealed in a tomb.  They were utterly convinced that Jesus was dead and that His death was final, as they had not understood anything He had told them concerning His resurrection (cf. Luke 18:31–34).  Moreover, they refused to believe the initial reports of His resurrection (cf. Mark 16:11 and John 20:24–29), and some of them remained doubtful even after personally experiencing the risen Christ (cf. Matthew 28:16–17)!  Hence, far from waiting around in eager anticipation for the Lord to come back to life after His death, the disciples instead promptly locked themselves in their homes, where they remained overcome with bereavement and paralyzing fear of the political and religious authorities.

 

Fact #4:  After Jesus’ death on the Cross, He was buried by a man named Joseph of Arimathea in his (Joseph’s) personal tomb in Jerusalem.

On this point, some of the more incredulous skeptics, such as Ehrman and Crossan, prefer to say that Jesus’ body was unceremoniously disposed of in a “common grave.”  (Without warrant, Crossan even conjectures that Jesus’ body was eaten by dogs!)  This notion, however, is purely speculative and now appears to be held by only a small minority of scholars.  Why?  There are no competing burial traditions from the first century or even later, apparently, that dispute the multiply-attested, independent eyewitness burial accounts that appear in all four Gospels, the book of Acts, and the super-early creedal tradition in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7. 

Besides, even if Jesus’ body had been buried somewhere other than a rock-hewn tomb, that would not rule out His resurrection.  In other words, He could have returned from the dead regardless of where His body was placed.  Finally, the other accepted historical facts — namely, the many reported post-death appearances and life transformations of those who claimed to witness Jesus alive from the dead — would still have to be explained.

“Crossan must disregard all the evidence we find in the Gospels to make this claim, and he can adduce no countervailing evidence to the contrary besides the custom of the day.  Jesus was certainly no common criminal, and the best records available to us claim He was buried in a special grave by Joseph of Arimathea.  Accordingly, Crossan’s controversial claim may be dismissed.” —Douglas Groothius, Christian philosopher and apologist, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith 

“What of the empty tomb?  Again, the credibility gap seems to me to rule out deliberate deceit by the disciples, or that the women went to the wrong tomb and no one bothered to check, or that Jesus never really died, or that his body was not buried but thrown into a lime-pit (the burial is one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus, being recorded in 1 Corinthians as well as in all four Gospels and, for what it is worth, in the Acts kerygma [i.e., “proclamation”]).” —John A.T. Robinson, English liberal theologian and NT scholar who rejected the supernatural elements of the Bible and who held heretical views about basically every major Christian doctrine, The Human Face of God, 1973, pp. 131 (emphasis mine)

 

Fact #5:  The tomb in which Jesus was buried was found empty shortly after His burial.

This fact is clearly the most contested by the more skeptical scholars, such as Ehrman and Crossan.  However, Dr. Habermas’ extensive research on this subject has determined that 66 to 75% of modern New Testament critical scholars currently believe in the empty tomb because there are now 23 arguments supporting it versus 14 opposing it. 

Regardless, the fact remains that no one, either in the first century or later, was ever able to produce the body or bones of Jesus of Nazareth after His well-attested death and burial.  Indeed, the Jewish and Roman authorities had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to disprove the empty tomb claims, but they did not because they could not.  As a result, their only recourse was to persecute the disciples of Christ and do everything in their power to silence the reports of Jesus’ resurrection, but this also they utterly failed to do.   

“If the empty tomb story had really been created subsequently to convince doubters, the church could surely have made a better job of it.  It rested it entirely on the testimony of women (which, in Jewish law, was not binding and whose visions do not even rate inclusion in the the Pauline list [in 1 Cor. 15:3–8 of the risen Christ’s appearances]), and it did not involve the apostles. . . . The evidence suggests indeed that [the empty tomb report] was very early tradition.  It is, after all, squarely in Mark, and shows no sign of being his creation but rather ‘tradition with a long history behind it.’  Moreover, Paul’s words in 1 Cor. 15:4 that Jesus ‘was buried’ and that ‘He was raised to life on the third day’ seem to presuppose some connection between a resurrection and the tomb (and not merely the appearances) as part of what [Paul] received at his first instruction as a Christian and of what was universally believed by the apostles.” —John A.T. Robinson, English liberal theologian and NT scholar who rejected the supernatural elements of the Bible and who held heretical views about basically every major Christian doctrine, The Human Face of God, 1973, pp. 132–133

 

Fact #6:  Jesus’ disciples had visual experiences after His death and burial in which they believed they witnessed actual, physical appearances of the risen Jesus.

The more skeptical scholars aren’t ready to concede that Jesus actually rose from the dead, of course, but they do at least admit that hundreds of Jesus’ followers sincerely believed they experienced Jesus alive from the dead.

Also bear in mind that the post-mortem appearances of Jesus occurred on at least 12 separate occasions, over a period of 40 days (approximately 1 month and 10 days), in a variety of locations (e.g., Jerusalem; Emmaus, which was 7 miles from Jerusalem; the Sea of Tiberias, which was approximately 70 miles from Jerusalem; and Galilee, which was at least 60 miles from Jerusalem), environments (indoors and outdoors), and times (daytime and nighttime) to individuals, small groups, and large crowds, including one incident in which at least 500 people reportedly saw Him simultaneously.  [Note:  There may have been many more than 500 “brethren,” as Paul called them, if women and children were not counted in that figure.]  During that lengthy span of time (i.e., 40 days), these numerous eyewitnesses, who were spread across a distance of 70 miles or more, claimed that they saw with their eyes, heard with their ears, touched with their hands, walked with, conversed with, and/or ate a meal with the risen Lord.  The witnesses’ clear and repeated emphases on the physical senses strongly lowers the probability that the figure they thought was the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth was really nothing more than a figment of their imagination (e.g., an illusion) or an immaterial spirit (e.g., an apparition or ghost).

Moreover, to surmise, as many skeptics have done over the years, that all of these purported witnesses of the risen Christ must have been suffering from a mass or collective group hallucination strains credulity beyond the breaking point.  Noteworthily, clinical psychologists have confirmed in peer-reviewed studies that simultaneous group hallucinations in which more than one person in a group experienced an identical hallucination have never been clinically documented in medical or psychological literature.  This is because a hallucination, by definition, is a very private, purely subjective (i.e., mind-dependent) visual or auditory experience that does not occur outside the mind of the hallucinating individual.  In other words, what the hallucinating person thinks he sees or hears occurs only in that person’s mind/imagination; there is no external referent (unlike an illusion or a mirage).  Thus, multiple people cannot share the exact same hallucination any more than they can co-experience the exact same dream or nightmare. 

[Note:  Non-simultaneous collective “visionary experiences” do occur, but they are rare, and they differ from true hallucinations.  Moreover, even these require a “heightened sense of group expectation, not everyone in the group [even] experiences a hallucination, those that do see something have different [not identical] hallucinations from one to another, and the apparitions [i.e., the object or figure the people in the group believe they saw] do not carry on conversations.”  These qualities are in clear contrast to what the New Testament records about the characteristics of the groups who believed they encountered Jesus of Nazareth after His death.  None of those people were expecting to see Jesus (or any other dead person) come back to life (refer back to Fact #3 for more on this point), they all described witnessing one and the same person (i.e., Jesus of Nazareth), and some of them reported simultaneously conversing with Him and hearing Him speak.]

Keep in mind also that people in the first century only had access to primitive and very slow modes of communication (by today’s standards, especially).  In other words, no one was spreading the news about Jesus’ alleged resurrection within hours or minutes via telegraph, telephone, radio, television, fax machines, computers, or “smartphones.”  And certainly, no one living in Judea was instantaneously sharing “viral” photos or videos of the risen Christ on Instagram or Facebook so that all their “friends” and “followers” over in Galilee could get all worked up in a frenzy and start hoping that they too might get to see Jesus alive from the dead!  The point is, nobody living in Judea, Samaria, Galilee, or elsewhere in the Roman world in the days following Jesus of Nazareth’s death had any reason to expect or desire to see a man who supposedly came back from the dead (especially in the physical sense).       

Furthermore, despite being absurdly implausible (if not impossible), the “Hallucination Theory” also fails to account for the empty tomb (i.e., Jesus’ body was still absent from the grave—where was it?) as well as the seismic life transformation of the hundreds of people who claimed to see Him alive after His death (see fact #7 below), especially those of skeptics and enemies of Jesus, such as Orthodox Jewish priests and James (Jesus’ brother) and Saul of Tarsus (see facts #11, #12, and #13 below).  For what reason or motivation would an unbeliever or an opponent of Christ imagine that Jesus had risen from the dead?  And if they (or any of the other witnesses) had been hallucinating about the Resurrection, how hard do you think it might have been to talk them out of their hallucination, given the severely detrimental personal ramifications of maintaining that scandalous claim?  Such persons surely weren’t expecting, much less desiring, to see Jesus come back to life!  And why on earth would they, of all people, risk their lives to advance the resurrection claim and to serve and glorify a man whom they had heretofore despised and whose teachings they had vehemently rejected up to that point IF they were not absolutely certain that they truly had empirically witnessed Him alive in the flesh after His death?  That just doesn’t fly.

 

Fact #7:  After having these experiences, Jesus’ disciples were rapidly transformed from despondent cowards hiding out for fear of the authorities, into bold, relentless proclaimers and defenders of Jesus’ resurrection, even to the point of martyrdom.

Because they were eyewitnesses and the authors of the resurrection message, Jesus’ followers were in a position to know whether He truly rose from the dead or whether they just made the whole thing up.  They were also well aware that continuing to proclaim His resurrection would result in their own violent persecution and death, yet they were willing to proceed anyway.

Question:  Would you be motivated to tell a lie if you knew the consequences would be any of the following:  ostracism from family and friends, excommunication from the religion/synagogue that had given your life identity and meaning, imprisonment (understand that first-century Roman jails/dungeons were nothing like the cozy, humane penitentiaries of modern America!), severe beatings, brutal scourging, vicious stoning, beheading, and/or some other gruesome, excruciating means of death, such as crucifixion or being burned alive or eaten by lions?

That idea simply isn’t reasonable.  If the disciples fabricated the resurrection of Jesus, they truly had nothing to gain (e.g., power, profit/prosperity, pleasure, popularity, or protection) and everything to lose (i.e., their reputation, relationships, livelihood, physical well-being, and even their souls if their previous religion, Judaism, turned out to be true instead of Christianity).  Moreover, it isn’t conceivable that anyone could have gotten away with such a grandiose ruse in the very city where Jesus was publicly executed and buried (see notes under fact #9 below for more on this point).  

Furthermore, even if the “Fraud Theory” were plausible (i.e., that the disciples simply lied about Jesus’ resurrection), it still would not explain the vacant grave of Jesus (where was His body?) or Jesus’ post-death appearances to hundreds of other eyewitnesses, not to mention the dramatic transformations those people also underwent in both belief and behavior, especially the skeptics and enemies of Jesus (Paul, in particular) who didn’t believe in Him to begin with and, consequently, definitely had no motivation to lie about His resurrection.

“The apostles surely would have cracked to save themselves.  Peter had already denied Jesus three times before the Resurrection in order to ‘save his skin’!  He surely would have denied Him after the Resurrection if the story had turned out to be a hoax.” —Drs. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, p. 293 (emphasis mine)

 

Fact #8:  The Resurrection of Jesus was the central message His disciples preached, and they preached the Resurrection shortly after Jesus’ death.  Furthermore, the Resurrection was the central proclamation of the early Church, and it remains the central doctrine of Christianity today.

As explained at the beginning of this article, the well-attested early creedal tradition that Paul recorded in his first letter to the church in Corinth, Greece (i.e., 1 Corinthians 15:3–7) proves that the apostles and other believers unquestionably began proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection (as well as His deity, His atoning death by crucifixion, His burial, and His post-resurrection appearances) in the early ’30s A.D.  Even the most skeptical scholars (e.g., atheists Gerd Lüdemann and Bart Ehrman) affirm this point and date this creedal information to within a few years of Jesus’ death, while other scholars (e.g., James D.G. Dunn and Walter Kasper) believe the data was more likely compiled within months of Jesus’ crucifixion.  Logically, if the creed was formulated that early, then the beliefs/doctrines summarized in the creed, which obviously included the Resurrection (“and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures”), had to have been believed and taught even earlier than the formulation date. 

What’s more, even aside from this incredibly early church creedal confession, the consensus among both liberal and conservative New Testament scholars is that Paul composed his first letter to the Corinthians in the early to mid-’50s (between 53 and 56) A.D., a mere 20–26 years after Jesus was crucified, when the majority of apostles and other eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus were still alive.  

Additionally, in Acts 2:14–36, the Apostle Peter preached the earliest recorded Christian sermon to a crowd of thousands in the very city where Jesus died and was buried, and the crux of his homily was the resurrection of Christ.  Significantly, the book in which this sermon appears, the Acts of the Apostles, is arguably the best-attested book of antiquity (cf. here and here for more), and was most likely composed no later than A.D. 62 when, once again, the majority of apostles and eyewitnesses to the recorded events were still living. 

“For Acts, the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. . . . [A]ny attempt to reject its basic historicity, even in matters of detail, must now appear absurd.  Roman historians have long taken it for granted.” —A.N. Sherwin-White, British historian of antiquity who specialized in Roman studies, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, 1963, p. 189

 

For evidence of what the Apostolic church fathers — that is, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, and others who were direct disciples/students of the original Apostles, such as Peter, John, and Paul — of the late first and early second centuries believed about Jesus’ resurrection, see here.

The centrality of Christ’s resurrection to Christianity is also beyond debate.  The Apostle Paul, who’s been called the “darling of the skeptics” for his historical reliability and overall integrity as a writer, explained this fact better than anyone when he wrote the following:

“If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, [and] your faith also is vain.  Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:14–19).

 

Fact #9:  The disciples preached the message of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem, which is the same city in which Jesus died and was buried.

Jerusalem is the last place on the planet a person would have wanted to make up a tale about Jesus rising from the dead, especially if doing so were illegal and punishable by death.  Why?  Both the Roman and Jewish authorities, along with myriad other eyewitnesses, saw Jesus die and watched Him be buried and sealed in a specific tomb in Jerusalem.  Thus, a fabricated resurrection story would’ve been easily and readily falsified, since all anyone had to do to silence the pesky Christians once for all was simply open the tomb in which Jesus was buried and parade His corpse around town.  Christianity would have ended right then and there, and no one would have been more pleased to see it end than the power-hungry Sanhedrin or the Romans, who viewed Christ and His followers as a seditious threat to Caesar. 

Of course, this never happened, because Jesus’ tomb was EMPTY, and His body was nowhere to be found.  Indeed, the Jewish authorities knew and unwittingly admitted this fact, seeing as how they were the first to concoct and spread the “Stolen Body Theory” — that is, that His sneaky disciples stealthily rolled away the stone during the night and stole Jesus’ cadaver without managing to awaken the allegedly “sleeping” Roman soldiers whose job was to guard Jesus’ grave — a most serious dereliction of duty, mind you, that would have resulted in the execution of those guards (cf. Matthew 28:11–15)!

 

Fact #10:  Soon after Jesus’ death, the Christian Church / Christianity was born, grew, and spread rapidly and widely.

Question:  How could Christianity have originated and exploded in a location swarming with hostile religious and political authorities and eyewitnesses to Jesus’ public execution and burial IF Jesus’ body were still in the grave? 

Why were so many skeptics and enemies of Jesus converted and the Roman Empire turned upside down (actually, right side up!) if He remained deceased? 

What else besides the actual bodily resurrection of this man called Jesus would inspire so many people willingly to leave their families, friends, careers, and all the comforts of home to embark on arduous and dangerous missionary journeys to faraway places and willingly endure the most perilous conditions and life-threatening circumstances just so they could share the news of the risen Christ with the rest of the world?

 

Fact #11:  Orthodox Jews, including strict, Torah-abiding Pharisaical priests (cf. Acts 6:7), came to believe in Jesus as Messiah and changed the Sabbath—their primary day of worship—from Saturday to Sunday in celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.

This change would have been considered blasphemous and absolutely unthinkable within Judaism.  In fact, not to observe the Sabbath in accord with Mosaic Law was a crime punishable by death (cf. Exodus 31:14).  Also keep in mind that the Jews, including Jesus’ core disciples, as well as skeptics James and Paul, had no prior concept of a dying Messiah figure, much less one who would rise from the dead bodily before the general resurrection at the end of the world.  In fact, they were expecting the Messiah to be a political conqueror who would overthrow the oppressive Romans and promptly restore the kingdom of Israel to its former glory.  They also believed that anyone who was hung to death on a tree, as Jesus was, was under the curse of God (cf. Deuteronomy 21:23 and Galatians 3:13–14). 

Furthermore, in choosing to follow Jesus as the Christ, Hebrew priests set aside the Levitical/Aaronic priesthood and gave up their sacred system of animal sacrifices.  In Judaism, to abandon these more than 1,500-year-old social and theological institutions was to endanger one’s soul of being condemned to hell for all eternity.  What, other than compelling reasons/proofs for Jesus’ resurrection, could have convinced scores of devout Jewish clergymen and “laity” to change their minds about these eternally imperative issues?

 

Fact #12:  James, one of the unbelieving siblings of Jesus (cf. Matthew 12:46–50, Matthew 13:55, Mark 3:20–21, and John 7:1–5), remained skeptical until some time after Jesus’ death when he had an experience that he believed to be an appearance of the risen Jesus.  After this event, James became a committed follower and apostle of Jesus and went on to pastor the main Christian church in Jerusalem.  

Question:  If your brother claimed to be God, what would it take to convince you that he actually is?  He would have to do something really extraordinary, right?  A feat that only God is capable of pulling off, no doubt?  Yep! 

By the way, according to multiple authors from antiquity, including first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, James was ultimately stoned to death for his faith in Jesus, ca. A.D. 62.  That underscores how dramatic his conversion was from hardened skeptic to unwavering believer in his brother as resurrected Lord and God Incarnate.

 

Fact #13:  Saul of Tarsus, better known as the Apostle Paul, a zealous Pharisee who had viciously persecuted Christians and who was determined to silence the message they were spreading about the risen Redeemer, abruptly became a devout follower of and missionary for Christ (the great “Apostle to the Gentiles,” in fact) after having an experience in which he believed he encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, Syria (a.k.a. Aram), which probably occurred within 1 to 3 years after Jesus’ death.

Question:  Why would Christianity’s greatest adversary suddenly become its greatest advocate — even to the point of death (note:  Paul is believed to have been executed by beheading sometime toward the end of Roman Emperor Nero’s bloody reign, circa A.D. 64–68) — if, in fact, Jesus, the man whom Paul had detested and considered to be a blaspheming false messiah and phony prophet, had remained dead and buried?  What would it take to change such a man’s mind so thoroughly and comprehensively about his enemy that he would write these words: 

“But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” —Philippians 3:7–11 (emphasis mine) 

 

One More Thing . . .

In Galatians 2:1–10, Paul notes that he, along with his ministry companions Barnabas and Titus, returned to Jerusalem 14 years after (i.e., somewhere between A.D. 50 and A.D. 53) his original meeting with Peter and James (i.e., the half-brother of Jesus, not to be confused with James the Son of Zebedee), which had occurred in the ‘30s, to meet with them a second time for the purpose of ensuring that the Gospel message he had been preaching to the Gentiles in the intervening years since that first meeting was the same central message all the other apostles were preaching.  Significantly, in this second meeting, the Apostle John, another of Jesus’ three closest disciples, was also in attendance.  Thus, the four apostolic pillars of early Christianity were assembled together in the same place, at the same time.  I like to refer to them as the Christian Beatles:  John, Paul, James, and Petros (okay, okay . . . Peter)!  What a monumental, dream-team “pastor’s conference” that must have been!

Bottom line:  One could hardly imagine a better group of sources from whom to learn the hard facts about Jesus of Nazareth’s ministry, personal character, teachings, miracles, suffering, death by crucifixion, burial, and—yes—His bodily resurrection.  (Incidentally, in case you don’t know “the rest of the story,” the three other highly respected apostles did, in fact, give Paul and his colleagues their blessing and the right hand of fellowship.) 

“The encouraging news about Paul’s writings, particularly 1 Corinthians and Galatians, is that he is a universally attested ancient authority on the historical Jesus of Nazareth, who was at the right place, at the right time, and with the right people — that is, three leaders of the early New Testament Church who were also eyewitnesses to Christ’s life, death, and resurrection — and he passes down to us their personal testimony.  This is powerful historical evidence.  Thus, one of the reasons we can be confident that Jesus rose from the dead is that we have Paul’s well-authenticated data confirming the event as historical fact — very early data, mind you, that he received shortly after Jesus’ death from no less an authority than the Apostles Peter, John, and James.  Wow!” —Dr. Gary Habermas

 

Now, What’s YOUR Verdict?

This remarkable list of historical facts about Jesus that even non-Christian and non-religious experts on the New Testament acknowledge as true reveals two major takeaways.

First, it bears witness to the historical reliability of the New Testament writings — namely, for the sake of this discussion, the four Gospels (which, again, are the primary-source historical documents regarding the life of Jesus of Nazareth), the historically well-validated book of Acts, and the Pauline epistles of 1 Corinthians and Galatians, which are two of the seven writings of Paul that skeptical scholars greatly admire for their authenticity.  (FYI, the others are Romans, 2 Corinthians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.)

Second, these combined facts require — nay, demand — an explanation that is adequate to make sense of their extraordinary, life-altering, world-changing significance.  Thus, the key question here for everyone is this:

If your mind is open to the possibility that God exists, which in turn would mean that miracles or supernatural occurrences are, at the very least, possible, what is the BEST explanation for all of the aforementioned facts?

I invite my skeptical friends to think very, very carefully and seriously about that question.  Please keep in mind, though, that it is not enough simply to speculate about alternative theories or naturalistic explanations for these facts.  Anyone can say, “Maybe this happened” or “Maybe that happened” until the cows come home, but those are not arguments.  An argument must be supported by actual evidence, and in this case, to disprove the Resurrection, one must posit counter-evidence from the first century that is not only plausible but that also better explains all of the above-mentioned facts (and some others that are not mentioned here) than the Resurrection does.    

The historical evidence for Christ’s resurrection is there, it is extremely well-attested, and — in light of the enormous gravity of the claims that Jesus of Nazareth made about Himself, humanity, the afterlife, and the coming judgment of God — we all have to deal with these facts. 

As Josh McDowell once said, this evidence “demands a verdict.”

So, what’s yours?

 

Recommended Resources

1) “The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection Even the Skeptics Believe” – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 – by Drs. Gary Habermas and John Ankerberg

2) “Did Jesus Literally Rise from the Dead?” – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 – by Drs. Gary Habermas and John Ankerberg

3) “The Evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection“ by Dr. William Lane Craig

4) The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Drs. Gary Habermas and Michael Licona

5) The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by Dr. Michael Licona

6) The Resurrection of the Son of God by Dr. N.T. Wright

7) I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Chapter 12, “Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?” by Drs. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek 

8) Memorable Reasons Why We Can—And Should—Trust the Bible

9) New Testament Manuscript Stats