The Resurrection Of Jesus — Historical Fact or Myth?
For some, the resurrection of Christ is dismissed as myth and magic while for millions upon millions of us the world over, it is a historical fact. So, which is it?
Here are some excellent grounds for accepting Christ Jesus’ resurrection as a matter of historical fact:
The Evidence
Historical fact (1): After being impaled on a stake, Joseph of Arimathea entombed Jesus’ corpse.
Historical fact (2): On the third day following his murder, Jesus’ tomb was discovered vacant by a group of his female disciples.
Historical fact (3): Distinct individuals as well as groups, on multiple occasions and under various circumstances, personally witnessed the resurrected Christ. Even his enemies and detractors testify to this fact.
Historical fact (4): His very first disciples believed Christ resurrected from the dead.
Prominently, in his book, “Justifying Historical Descriptions,” historian C. B. McCullagh lists six tests which historians use in determining what is the best explanation for given historical facts. The conclusion “God raised Jesus from the dead” passes all these tests:
1. It has great explanatory scope: it explains why the tomb was found empty, why the disciples saw post-mortem appearances of Jesus, and why the Christian faith came into being.
2. It has great explanatory power: it explains why the body of Jesus was gone, why people repeatedly saw Jesus alive despite his earlier public execution, and so forth.
3. It is plausible: given the historical context of Jesus’ own unparalleled life and claims, the resurrection serves as divine confirmation of those radical claims.
4. It is not ad hoc or contrived: it requires only one additional hypothesis: that God exists. And even that needn’t be an additional hypothesis if one already believes that God exists.
5. It is in accord with accepted beliefs. The hypothesis: “God raised Jesus from the dead” doesn’t in any way conflict with the accepted belief that people don’t rise naturally from the dead. The Christian accepts that belief as wholeheartedly as he accepts the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead.
6. It far outstrips any of its rival hypotheses in meeting conditions (1)-(5). Down through history various alternative explanations of the facts have been offered, for example, the conspiracy hypothesis, the apparent death hypothesis, the hallucination hypothesis, and so forth. Such hypotheses have been almost universally rejected by contemporary scholarship. None of these naturalistic hypotheses succeeds in meeting the conditions as well as the resurrection solution.
In his book “The Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus”, Michael Licona provides a list of scholars who attest to the historicity of Christ’s death and resurrection which includes Brodeur, Collins, Conzelman, Fee, Gundry, Harris, Hayes, Hèring, Hurtado, Johnson, Kistemaker, Lockwood, Martin, Segal, Snyder, Thiselton, Witherington, and Wright.
Concordantly, British scholar N. T. Wright states:
“As a historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him.” (N. T. Wright, “The New Unimproved Jesus,” Christianity Today (September 13, 1993)), p. 26.
Even Gert L¸demann, the leading German critic of the resurrection, himself admits:
“It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”(Gerd L¸demann, What Really Happened to Jesus?, trans. John Bowden (Louisville, Kent.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), p. 80.)
These are just a minute sampling of the throng of scholars who all attest to the historicity of Christ’s resurrection.
So what do you think? Could any naturalistic hypothesis explain all of these historical facts better than the obvious: God Almighty resurrected Christ?
