“The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion.

It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity.” – Antony Flew [1]

::: Can the Resurrection of Jesus be historically substantiated? Yes, and every other explanation fails.

The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is quite solid on historical grounds. Even though I will be mainly focusing on the historical evidence supporting the claim that God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, I have noticed even solid historical evidence has a tough time overpowering people’s philosophical objections to the resurrection. These I cannot address here, since we are mainly looking at the historical – and not the philosophical – validity of the resurrection.

How can we know the resurrection of Jesus has any historical validity? I offer three considerations:

ONE: The Nature and Literary Genre of the Gospels

A major consideration often overlooked in these discussions is the nature of the Gospels. It is not appropriate to call them biographies in the purest sense; they have elements that were common to the genre of ancient biographies, sometimes called bios.  Those who want to write the Gospels off as mere ‘myths for the faithful’ have to ask themselves why were the faithful the faithful in the first place? They also have to deal with how the Gospels describe themselves (as historical documents); this is most explicit in the highly formalized Greek prologue of Luke:

“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.” (ESV)

Here, the author is claiming to have done research for the sake of certainty – this is not how one begins a religious myth. Not only that, but there are certain incidental details – many of which we are just now discovering – which are rooted and embedded in a first century Jerusalem context. One example in regards to the resurrection is the kind of tomb mentioned in connection with the burial of Jesus. It was an acrosolia or a bench tomb; these tombs were used by notables – such as Joseph of Arimethea – in Jesus’ day.

Another key point is the inclusion of women as the first witnesses to the resurrection. The testimony of women was not well regarded in first century Jewish society. If the narratives are legendary, why then would the authors include testimony by people who were not seen as credible by their peers? On a related note, if the authors were writing stories to bolster people’s faith, why would they portray all the early leaders of the church at that time as cowards and doubters? Per what historians call the ‘criterion of embarrasment’, both of these factors point to the historical veracity of the resurrection accounts.

TWO: The Religio-Historical Background of the Resurrection Accounts

One handicap some people face in talking about the historical Jesus – and hence the resurrection narratives – is they are not up on current scholarly literature. If one were to glean their information about Jesus from the Internet, one may come away with the impression that the historical Jesus sits squarely within the Hellenistic motif of ‘divine men’ or some such variation. If one thought this, one would be incorrect in their understanding of the historical Jesus and the accounts of his resurrection. From decades of recent research, we can see Jesus’ historical context is in a first century Semitic (specifically Jewish) context. This means we now understand better than ever the ‘Jewishness’ of Jesus – any other framework will not do. For more information on this fact, Ben Witherington’s book The Jesus Quest, details the quest(s) for the historical Jesus and its findings. Before any meaningful discussion about the resurrection can begin, one must understand the ancient Semitic fabric of the life, death and resurrection (the last point being debated here, of course) of Jesus of Nazareth.

I mention this because it is precisely at this point that many critiques of the resurrection fall flat. Many critics of the resurrection as history insert non-Semitic theology and Greco-Roman views of religion into the resurrection narratives and then make false parallels in an effort to discredit the resurrection of Jesus as the unique event that it was. One reason this is such a massive error is because most Greeks absolutely shunned the idea of a bodily resurrection. How can one match the Platonic view of the body – that the material element was undesirable – with the Christian teaching that because Jesus received a new resurrection body, one day Christians will, too? This collision of worldviews is illustrated in Paul’s Mars Hill discourse in Acts 17. As soon as Paul told the assembled Athenians of his hope in a bodily resurrection, they mocked and ridiculed him. The Greeks viewed the body as a prison for the soul and wanted to be rid of it, not receive it anew in the afterlife!

The tales of so-called ‘resurrections’ you so often hear about are no such thing; the attempted parallels are false and the supposed similarities are stretched beyond the point of recognition. For one, many of these gods’ so-called resurrections are post-dated after the rise of Christianity and could not have influenced it. If Tim wants to claim Greco-Roman myths played a role in formulating Christian resurrection belief, he is going to have to give us a rock solid date prior to Christianity. Further, he is going to have to demonstrate there was a transfer of ideas that can be traced from said pre-Christian source. Lastly, he is going to have to explain away any competing ‘resurrection’ tales about whatever god he may choose to use as his resurrection model. We are going to need specific details if he decides to go this route, we cannot blindly take his word on it.

THREE: The Cause of the Birth and Growth of the Early Christian Church

One can show resurrection belief arose very early in Christianity. NT scholars will tell you the earliest Kerygma (‘proclamation’ or ‘preaching’) was centered on the bodily resurrection of Jesus. There are several different strands of resurrection tradition found within the NT itself. To understand this, we must recall the NT was not originally one book but rather a collection of the earliest Christian testimony and later bound together. This means we have various literary witnesses to the resurrection from different sources within the one work we now refer to as the NT. Even the most skeptical form and source critics recognize this.

On a related note is the birth and growth of the early church itself. Here’s what I mean: how does one account for first century Jews changing their eschatological views without the resurrection of Jesus? Most Jews of this era believed there would be a general resurrection of the righteous dead at the eschaton (‘the end of the age’), not during history. Not only that, but this event would not be of one individual but of all the faithful. This belief can be seen in a statement made by Martha of Bethany in John 11:24. Since all the first Christians were Jewish, why did they suddenly start talking about and writing about a resurrection of one individual – the Messiah, no less – within space and time? This is a huge question that must be answered, since Christian resurrection belief cannot be accounted for within the Judaism of that time. If there was no resurrection, how did this belief arise?

There were other major changes in Jewish practice and doctrine for early Christians. Here are just a few of those changes:

• Changing the Sabbath to worship on Sunday
• Worshipping Jesus ‘in addition to’ than Yahweh
• Loosening up or abandoning dietary restrictions
• Accepting Gentile believers as brothers and sisters
• Worshipping anywhere, as opposed to only a synagogue or in Jerusalem

British scholar N.T. Wright gives more reasons for Jewish views changing regarding the resurrection, which can be read at Shawn White’s post here.

::: Conclusion

From this information, we can see the NT has a variety of important source material supporting the resurrection. We can also see that pagan mythologies are not a valid explanation for the accounts we have of the resurrection. We can also see that any alternative explanation for the resurrection has to be able to give us a reason for the birth and growth of the early church, especially when we can see the amazing fact that early Jewish Christians transformed many of their central beliefs and practices. To defend his position, Tim must not only discredit the evidence I have laid out but also give us a more plausible explanation. I think history will not be in his favor in this effort.

NOTES:

[1] Gary Habermas, “My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism: An Exclusive Interview with Former British Atheist Professor Antony Flew.”

Was Jesus resurrected from the dead?  I say no.

Of course, I have no way of being absolutely sure. All I can really say is that I have insufficient evidence to accept the claim. However, what is the reasonable position when you don’t have evidence enough? Is it to say "well, it’s 50-50, I have no way of assigning a truth value either way"? I don’t think so, at least not always. If the claim is extraordinary, the evidence needs to be strong enough to support it. An extraordinary claim with weak evidence earns a rating of "it seems highly unlikely, so I will not accept that claim until further evidence presents itself". This, in shorthand, becomes my "no" of the title.

Why Jesus being raised from the dead is an extraordinary claim should be obvious. Never in recorded history have we witnessed anything dead come back to life = not humans, not animals, not plants. Furthermore, we have strong scientific reasons to think that once an organism is dead, it cannot come back to life because of destructive processes like cell tissue death, oxygen deprivation (in animals) and so on.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we can’t be wrong and that resurrection can’t happen anyway. It does mean, however, that we need some pretty good evidence that it actually did happen.  If I told you that I had cornflakes for breakfast yesterday morning, you’d be inclined to make my word for it because it’s an unextraordinary claim. You know cornflakes exist, you know people eat them, you have probably eaten them yourself.  On the other hand, if I tell you that I died and came back to life yesterday morning, you would be much more skeptical of this claim. And so you should be.

Now imagine that I were in a murder trial where the only thing can could save me from a conviction would be if I had eaten cornflakes yesterday morning. That would be the bulletproof alibi. Now, when I then turn around and state, why yes, I did have cornflakes yesterday morning – well, now you would demand evidence. You wouldn’t just let me go, because the truth value of the claim now has great importance. You could get a forensic test of my stomach contents, check my house and trash to see if I have an open box of cornflakes, suitable milk, etc.

Now, finally, imagine that my only alibi would be that I died and was resurrected yesterday morning. Whatever amount of evidence you’d ask for before is now even greater, because not only is the claim extraordinary, it’s deeply important.

Jesus’ resurrection fits this profile. Christians claim that accepting this fact is the most important thing in the world – it will determine if you go to heaven or to hell. It is both extraordinary and important (to Christians). And therefore, the evidence needs to be looked at carefully.

Evidence for a resurrection

So, let us start looking at the evidence. Unfortunately, unless I have missed an important source, we find no sources that claim Jesus came back from the dead outside the New Testament.  Not that biblical sources can reasonably be discounted out of hand – but they have special interests in preserving the story that is so central to their religion. We will look at thoese documents in turn. Well, Yes, there is that one passage by Josephus which goes:

"When Pilate, upon the accusation of the first men amongst us, condemned [Jesus] to be crucified, those who had formerly loved him did not cease [to follow him], for he appeared to them on the third day, living again, as the divine prophets foretold, along with a myriad of other marvellous things concerning him."

Here’s the thing about that: in the very same text, Josephus espouses the roman General Vespasian as the expected Messiah:

"What did the most to induce the Jews to start this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how, about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth. The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea." (Flavius Josephus, Jewish War 6.312-313, emphasis mine)

This, along with Origen’s writing on Josephus where he plainly states that Josephus was not a Christian, makes it a little strange that Josephus seemingly reports the miraculous resurrection of Jesus (who he also called ‘the Christ’ in the same passage). This seems like a strange contradiction, pointing to a corruption of the text in at least one of the two places.

The passage about Jesus, sadly, seems to be the prime candidate for the "bad apple". No Christian writer quoting Josephus or otherwise familiar with him mention this amazing tale of a Jew rising from the dead – despite them having strong interest in as much proof as they could get their hands on.  Vocabulary analysis also makes the same passage stick out of the rest of The Jewish War like a sore thumb. The consensus among scholars is that the passage did originally mention Jesus, but that the content of the passage has now been entirely corrupted, probably with pious scribes wanting to emphasize the point while copying the original text.

This brings me to the biblical texts and the way I think it is reasonable to read them:  I do not think there is any fair reason to say that there are outright hoaxes and frauds in the documents. I think the authors believed that what they were writing was relevant to their readers, with no ulterior motives. The scribes corrupting Josephus were, in their own mind at least, simply adding some obviously true facts about Jesus when they came across his name. That kind of "fine tuning" of copied documents is seen all the time, to the frustration of classical scholars who are interested in the uncorrupted source. In the same way, the stories about the resurrection were passed along by people who were spreading the word of their religion as they perceived it. We must remember the historical and cultural context where these writings were made. They were written in a philosophical soup of ideas about divine beings, saviours, God-men in all the pagan religions. This was conventional wisdom at the time- tales about great men performing miracles, of divine origin, returning to the Gods, etc etc. They were everywhere at the time (just look at Roman mythology, for one. Or any of the other dozens of pagan traditions from the period.)

The early Christian writers all believed Jesus was a God–as their ancient minds understood Gods. So when they sat down to write about His life from 50AD onwards, they naturally wrote it as they understood it, in their own cultural terms. Jesus was a God who came to Earth. Gods fulfilled property. Jesus fulfilled prophesy. Gods came down from the sky through mortal women. Jesus came down from the sky through a mortal woman. Gods had the power to do miracles. Jesus had the power to do miracles(He even did the same miracles as some of the other Gods). Gods taught wisdom. Jesus taught wisdom. Gods saved. Jesus saves. Gods died on Earth and went back to the sky. Jesus died on Earth and rode a cloud back up to His God-place in the sky. There is nothing particularly amazing, from a literary point of view, about the story of Jesus – it was the way they told the story of the great, inspirational man who had appeared from Nazareth and convinced the apostles. The big mistake today would be to take it all literally. Our minds are not attuned to mythological storytelling of factual events. We expect documentary-style fly-on-the-wall stories and read the gospels like that. It’s the wrong pair of spectacles for the text.

That’s not to say that people didn’t actually believe the stories at the time, though. People believed the myths, pagan or Christian, partly because that was how the ancients understood the world – through myth. There was no more objective understanding of reality to compare the myths to – only other myths.

To this mix, all I am going to add is the human propensity to retell a good story without checking the facts, and point to modern examples of myths being created within a short time of an event. As just one example, look at the whole deal with Elvis not being really dead after all, being sighted and having thousands of believers in the "Elvis not dead" theory. I don’t intend that to be a point-by-point comparison to Jesus’ resurrection, of course. Just wanted to show that myths arise and spread quite independently of truth and evidence sometimes.

Preface: This debate is being posted on a Christian site as well as here, and these rules are copied directly from the same source, and have been agreed on by the participants.

That said, while we encourage everyone to be civil and reasonable, and to refrain from using excessively “foul language”, we trust you to use good judgement in what you post and we do not intend to censor you.

Enjoy the debate, and please participate!

The Rules

Welcome to an online resurrection debate. I will be hosting a debate on the topic of the Resurrection between John-Mark "Vocab" and Tim Jorgensen.

Here are the particulars:

TOPIC: Can the Resurrection of Jesus be Historically Substantiated?
Affirmative: Vocab
Negative: Tim Jorgensen

Participant Rules:

1. Opening Statements
   1. Each participant will provide an opening statement (approx. 1,500 words in length per side). Vocab will give the affirmative side and Tim will give the negative side.
2. Rebuttals
   1. Each side will respond with a rebuttal to the other persons opening statement
3. Cross-Examination
   1. Each participant will submit a series of questions to the other person that deal with statements made in either their opening statement or their rebuttal.
   2. Each participant will answer the questions as succinctly and as directly as possible.
   3. New questions are not permitted, unless they are of a clarifying nature.
4. Closing Remarks
   1. Each side will end with their closing statements

Commenter Rules:

1. Anyone is free to comment and discuss, just remember:
   1. Keep your comments relevant to the discussion/debate
   2. Attack ideas, not people
   3. No foul language
   4. Keep it civilized