4 Points of Evidence for the Resurrection (Pt1)

As our text will attest today, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is fundamental to our Christian faith. So believing in it, and being able to provide reasons for this resurrection hope that we have, is important for Christians.

The next two editorials will provide four points of evidence for the Resurrection¹. This approach, known as the “minimal facts argument” is elegant in that we do not have to presuppose the divine inspiration or inerrancy of the Gospels to make the case. These four points are facts affirmed by most historians and scholars today. This week, we will look at (1) Jesus’ Death and Burial and (2) The Empty Tomb.

May this reading equip your understanding and strengthen your conviction in the Resurrection!

Pastor Luwin Wong

Evidence for the Resurrection

For two thousand years, Christians have insisted that Jesus rose physically from the dead on the Sunday after his crucifixion. The historicity of the resurrection is central to Christian theology because Jesus’ death and resurrection are both tied to our salvation. While most religions teach that we are saved on the basis of the good things we do, Christianity teaches that we are saved on the basis of what Jesus did for us. The Bible insists that while we were still far from God, ignoring him, rejecting him and rebelling against him, God drew near to us in Christ to bear our sin, to take our punishment and to die on the cross in our place. The resurrection was God’s confirmation that Jesus was who he claimed to be, and it is God’s assurance to Christians that they have been forgiven.

Because of its theological significance, many people assume that the resurrection is merely an article of religious faith, not an event for which there could be any historical evidence. But that is not the case. In fact, I would argue that even from a purely secular standpoint, the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is quite strong. For instance, skeptic Jeffery Lowder, a cofounder of Internet Infidels, writes that “strong historical arguments” can be made for the resurrection. Although he thinks that such arguments are insufficient, he agrees that “for theists [people who believe in God’s existence] . . . the resurrection is a plausible explanation.”¹ Similarly, renowned atheist-turned-deist philosopher Antony Flew affirms that “the evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity.”² Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide even states, “I accept the resurrection of Easter Sunday not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as a historical event.”³

What historical evidence was sufficient to convince these non-Christians that the resurrection should be taken seriously and not carelessly dismissed? Although there are other lines of evidence, I’ll sketch an argument for the historicity of the resurrection that rests on four main points: the death and burial of Jesus, the empty tomb, the belief of the apostles, and the conversion of Paul.⁴ 

1. Jesus’ Death and Burial

Contemporary historians are virtually unanimous in their acceptance of Jesus’s death on the cross.⁵ His death by crucifixion is the single fact most mentioned in all the historical records of his life, both Christian and non-Christian. It is recorded in numerous books of the New Testament, including all four Gospels, Acts, Paul’s letters, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and Revelation. It is mentioned by non-Christians like Josephus and Tacitus. It is discussed in apocryphal gospels such as the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Truth. And it is referenced by numerous early Christian writings, including 1 Clement and the epistles of Barnabas and Polycarp. Moreover, it is extremely unlikely that the early Christians would have invented the story that their Saviour was an executed criminal. Agnostic Bart Ehrman writes:

It is hard today to understand just how offensive the idea of a crucified messiah would have been to most first-century Jews. . . . Since no one would have made up the idea of a crucified messiah, Jesus must really have existed, must really have raised messianic expectations and must really have been crucified.⁶

New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann captures the scholarly consensus when he writes, “The fact of the death of Jesus as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable.”⁷ Similarly, there is strong evidence for the historicity of Jesus’ burial. Most importantly, Jesus’s burial is recorded in all four Gospels. The burial of Jesus is also explicitly mentioned in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, written in the late AD 50s, around thirty years after Jesus’s death, and it probably reflects a much earlier creed.⁸ Given that multiple attestation is one of the major criteria by which New Testament scholars adjudicate the historicity of an event,⁹ the fact that several independent sources reference the same event strongly suggests that it is historical. Second, the Gospels all claim that Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious court that condemned Jesus to death. It seems unlikely that early Christians would have invented this detail involving such a prominent figure, one who was a member of a group opposed to the early Christian movement.¹⁰

If we accept the position that Jesus did actually die on the cross and was actually buried, we must then ask: What happened to Jesus after his death and burial?

2. The Empty Tomb

Second, the New Testament Gospels claim that the tomb of Jesus was found empty on the Sunday following his crucifixion. While this claim is not universally affirmed, a recent survey of three decades’ worth of academic literature shows that it was accepted by the majority of scholars who wrote on that subject.¹¹ The strongest piece of evidence in favour of the historicity of the empty tomb is the report that it was discovered by women. This detail may not strike us as odd, but it is surprising, given the low status of women in the first century. For example, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus claimed that Jewish law expressed the following sentiment regarding the reliability of women: “Let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex.”¹² If the early Christians were inventing narratives to support their own version of events, why not ascribe the discovery of the tomb to witnesses who would have been received as more credible?

Reflecting on this piece of evidence, Jewish New Testament scholar Geza Vermes concludes:

In the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be that the opinions of the orthodox, the liberal sympathiser and the critical agnostic alike — and even perhaps of the disciples themselves — are simply interpretations of the one disconcerting fact: namely that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb.¹³

Notice that Vermes is not defending the resurrection; he suggests that it may have been an “interpretation” of the disciples. Nevertheless, he recognises the strength of the women’s testimony as evidence that the tomb was really found empty.

A second factor supporting the historicity of the empty tomb is the fact that just seven weeks after Jesus’s death, the apostles began preaching the resurrection in Jerusalem itself, the very city in which Jesus had been crucified. Had he been lying in a tomb even for this length of time, his features such as hair, teeth, stature, and the wounds of crucifixion would have still been identifiable.¹⁴ It is difficult to see how the fledgling Christian movement could have survived despite the opposition of the ruling authorities if the corpse of Jesus had been interred within walking distance of the temple. Any skeptic who wanted to refute the claims of the apostles could have silenced them by taking a short stroll to the burial place of Jesus. Yet we have no record of anyone claiming that the disciples lied about the empty tomb. How did Christianity grow so rapidly in the very place where Jesus was buried if it could have been falsified so easily?¹⁵

Finally, at the end of his Gospel, Matthew provides what amounts to a dialogue between Christians and Jews regarding the body of Jesus.¹⁶ He states that the Jewish leaders of his day insisted that Jesus’s body had been stolen by the disciples, a claim that apparently was still circulating in the second century, since it is referenced in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho.¹⁷ But this accusation implies that the Jewish leaders believed that the tomb was actually empty; obviously, they would not have accused the disciples of grave robbery if they believed that Jesus’ body was still in the tomb. For these reasons, most skeptical responses to the resurrection do not simply dismiss the empty tomb as a legend, but try to provide some alternative explanation for it.

¹ Shenvi, Neil, (2023, Mar 31). 4 Points of Evidence for the Resurrection. Crossway

https://www.crossway.org/articles/4-points-of-evidence-for-the-resurrection