The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation of the entire Christian theological system.  If the resurrection did not take place, the Christian theological system is a fraud.  The whole focus of Christianity is our being able to resurrect to eternal life as a result of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.  Some believe that we will be raised physically at a yet future return of Christ.  Others believe we will be raised with some kind of spiritual body at the time of Christ’s second coming.   Still others believe that resurrection involves a spiritual passing from death unto life at the time of placing faith in Christ as savior.  Regardless of which belief is embraced, the Christian theological system demands the reality of a resurrected Christ to make it all possible.

       The birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ are discussed in detail by the writers of the New Testament documents.  Secular writers such as the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman historian Tacitus,  reference the death of Christ but do not reference the resurrection.   All these writers wrote within a relatively short time subsequent to the time that Christ walked on this earth.  Yet there is no recorded eyewitness to the resurrection.  Apparently no one saw Christ leave the tomb and provide a written witness to such an observation.

       Some have tried to show that Christ didn’t really die but somehow survived the crucifixion and later appeared to his disciples.  In view of what we know about the ordeal that Christ would have gone through, such an idea is rather absurd.  The idea that within three days of His having been flogged and nailed to a cross and having had a spear run through his side, he would be walking around looking normal is completely without merit and too ludicrous to intelligently discuss.

WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION?

         History strongly indicates that the gospels were written within 30 to 40 years after the ascension of Christ.   It is recognized by most Biblical scholars that Apostle Paul wrote the earliest scriptural material and  this material precedes the gospels by a number of years.  Therefore Paul’s discussion of the resurrection in his letter to the Corinthian Church is noteworthy.

       I Corinthians 15: 3-7:  “For what I have received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that He was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter, and then to the twelve.  After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of them are still living, though some have fallen asleep.  Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all He appeared to me also, as one abnormally born.”

       Paul, in what is believed to be a very early letter, speaks of the resurrection and subsequent appearances of Christ.  He writes that others handed down this information to him. He relates that Christ appeared to over five hundred of the brothers at the same time. We therefore have a very early written attestation to the resurrection.

       We are all familiar with Paul’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus.  The scriptures indicate Jesus Christ spoke directly to Paul who was out and about persecuting the Christians.  Paul was a well educated leader within the Jewish community. He knew all about the Christ event.  It is obvious that Paul did not believe Jesus Christ to be the promised Messiah to Israel.  He obviously didn’t believe that Jesus Christ was resurrected.  Paul had no tolerance for the developing Christian community or their belief in a resurrected Messiah.  However, after being knocked off his horse and blinded, it wasn’t long before he begins to preach that Jesus is the Son of God.  Thus Paul implicitly begins to preach the resurrection.
 
      Some dismiss Paul’s experience as an hallucination and define Paul’s subsequent dedication to Christ as the result of his having had a conversion experience.  It must be remembered, however, that Paul was not seeking to be a follower of Christ.  His focus was to destroy the developing Christian community.  Most conversion experiences occur subsequent to a person seeking enlightenment in whatever religious system they become converted to.  Scripture records that “Saul (Paul) began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison” Acts 8:3.

       Acts 9:1-2:  Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest  and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

      Paul was a high ranking Pharisee in the Jewish religious system.  He would not have been easily persuaded to change his theological perspectives.  He was not seeking to do so.  Instead he was on a “witch hunt” to drive the Christians off the face of the earth. 

       The incident on the road to Damascus certainly got Paul’s attention. After being blind for three days, the disciple Ananias prayed for him and his sight was restored.  Paul then spent several days with the disciples in Damascus.  I am sure that during this time Paul learned a great deal about Jesus Christ and was convinced of Christ’s resurrection.  In a short time Paul was proving to the Jews that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah.

       Acts 9:17-22:  Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord--Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here--has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit."  Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized,  and after taking some food, he regained his strength.   Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God  All those who heard him were astonished and asked, "Isn't he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?"  Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.

     Some look at the scriptural record of the resurrection and conclude that it is legend. The scriptural record of the resurrection is thought to be a mytholization of Christ?   It should be noted, however, that because of what is considered to be a very early date for Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, there would be little chance of legend having developed to corrupt the record.  To propose that the resurrection account is legend simply does not stand up.  Paul’s attestation of the resurrection should be considered resonable evidence.
   
       Paul claims that more than five hundred people had witnessed the risen Christ.  While it is true this is the only report of five hundred people seeing Christ, Paul does say that most of them were still alive.  This would be a rather flippant claim if it were untrue.  Paul could have been easily challenged by his contemporaries as to the validity of his claim and therefore would have put himself at risk for much ridicule if he couldn’t produce any of these purported witnesses.   
     
       Since so many people are reported to have seen the resurrected Christ, some have questioned why there wasn’t more recorded material about the resurrection.  There may have been more recorded material, which has since become lost. We just don’t know.  Of those that Paul reports as having seen Christ, we have to question how many of them were literate and therefore able to record what they saw.  We know that all writers of New Testament documents attest to Christ being alive.   
   
      When Jesus was crucified, his followers must have been discouraged, depressed and disillusioned.  Jewish law stated that anyone crucified was accursed by God.  The disciples, like the Israelites in general, were looking for a messiah to restore the Davidic Kingdom and rescue them from Roman rule.  The followers of Christ  thought that He was that messiah. Now their hopes and dreams were shattered.  Then after a relatively short period of time, we find them abandoning their occupations, and traveling throughout Israel and beyond declaring that Christ is alive and the Son of God.

      They were willing to endure ridicule, beatings, imprisonment, torture and in many cases death. Why?  They were convinced  that they had seen Christ alive after He had been dead.  So convincing were their arguments for the risen Christ that thousands converted to Christianity in a very short period of time and many of these individuals suffered torture and death at the hands of the Roman government under Nero.

        Some people will die for their beliefs if they sincerely believe they are true.  People will not die for their beliefs if they are not convinced  they are true.  The followers of Christ were convinced he was alive because a number of them were convinced they had seen Him alive..

       It can be argued that to die for ones beliefs isn’t all that extraordinary.  Look at the suicide bombers in the Middle East or the Kamikaze pilots during World War 2.    People have been willing to die for all sorts of beliefs throughout history.  Sometimes these beliefs have been based in religion, sometimes in political movements and sometimes in just dogged conviction of a principle or moral ethic.

      For example, a Muslim may be willing to die for his belief that through the Angel Gabriel Allah appeared to Muhammad and therefore the tenants of the Muslim belief system are divinely based and something to die for.  The difference between the Muslim and the Christian example is that Muhammad is the only reported witness to the appearance of Gabriel.  No one else was present to either prove or disprove the witness of Muhammad.  

       With the Christian example, the scriptural record points to multiple witnesses to the resurrected Christ along with the distinct opportunity available for someone to disprove the resurrection by simply producing a body or demonstrating that the one claiming to be the resurrected Christ was an impostor.  There is no evidence that this ever happened.  The enemies of Christianity could have blown the Christians out of the water by simply producing the dead body of Christ. 
 
       The scriptures report the burial of Christ and three days later an empty tomb.  Some dismiss the empty tomb narratives because of apparent discrepancies in the various accounts.  All four of the gospel authors, however, do report the same basic observation that the tomb was indeed empty.  So even if secondary details are somewhat different, the basic detail is the same, a common characteristic of historical narratives.   It is recorded that when confronted with the fact the tomb was empty, the Jewish leadership didn’t deny it but instead said the body was stolen when the guards fell asleep.  Yet the body was never found.  Some to this very day believe the body was stolen.  Was the body stolen?

       This was a high profile case for the Jewish leadership.  They wanted Christ out of their hair and accomplished this through the crucifixion.  Now the body was missing.  I am sure they would have left no stone unturned to find the body.  Yet no body was found. 

       It should be observed that the disciples of Christ were not expecting a resurrected Christ.  When the women found the tomb empty and reported  to the disciples that they had seen Christ, Mark writes that the disciples thought it was nonsense.  Like most of Israel, these men were looking for a messiah to reestablish the Davidic kingdom and save them from Roman oppression.  The disciples thought Christ might be that messiah.  When Christ was crucified, their hopes were dashed.  Even though Christ had told them He would rise, that message had not sunk in.  The reality of seeing a dead Christ on the cross was all they could focus on.  This had become their new reality.

       To conclude, therefore that the disciples would steal the dead body of Christ and then proclaim it was alive and proceed to build a religious system based on that lie and die for that lie is ludicrous.

       It should be noted that the gospel narratives record that it was women who were the first witnesses to the risen Christ.  In first century culture, women were not recognized as reliable witnesses.  It is therefore argued that if the resurrection account were legend, you would not find women recorded to be witnesses to the resurrection. 

     We need to ask if it is reasonable to believe that the writers of the NT narrative purposely wrote fictional narrative as to the appearances of Christ and then proceeded to spend the rest of their lives suffering for their fiction and in many cases dying for it, all the while knowing it to be fiction.  Such a conclusion simply does not square with normal human behavior.

       Humans have supported, promoted, suffered and died for a wide variety of beliefs. Such beliefs are based on a conviction that what is believed is true.  Humans will not suffer and die for what they know to be false unless they are coerced into such behavior by governing authorities.   We find no coercion evident among the followers of Christ.  Instead we find fearful and disappointed men at the death of Christ, suddenly becoming powerful in word and deed upon believing that the dead Christ is no longer dead but alive.   Could these men have somehow been deluded into believing that Christ was alive?  The scriptural record presents Christ as appearing to them in a variety of ways and under a variety of circumstances over a period of forty days. To conclude that all these appearances and interactions were delusional would appear to be an unreasonable conclusion.

       Those who believe in the divinity of other “saviors” do not have the kind of eyewitness evidence for their return to life from the dead that is inherent in Christianity.  There are no multiple attestations of men witnessing the appearances of a person that was dead but is now alive, in any other religious system.  While other religious systems have crucified and resurrected “saviors” as part of their system, they do not have documented attestations and therefore they lack any preponderance of evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, that would support their conclusions.

         The response of the disciples to seeing the resurrected Christ was to proclaim and witness what they had seen to the world.  That witness was supported through many miracles, signs and wonders.  So convinced were they of the presence of Christ, that the converts to Christianity were willing to suffer greatly for their convictions. 

       While other religious systems have arisen based on reports of miraculous events that came to be believed by many people, our belief in the validity of the Christian religious system must rest on determining whether there is sufficient and reasonable evidence to conclude that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.  While there is no record of a direct witness to Christ’s resurrection, there is an abundance of circumstantial evidence as covered above.  In addition, there is the recorded witness of Christ being seen as alive by His disciples and by over five hundred at the same time.  Obviously, if Christ was seen alive, we can conclude He was resurrected.

        Some will question the validity of the scriptural record in general and will therefore be reluctant to place faith in the record of Christ being seen alive after His crucifixion .  The reliability of the scriptural record will be discussed in an up coming essay.  It should be noted, however, that even if one doubts the reliability of the scriptural record, the fact remains that the Christian system developed rapidly in response to a perceived extraordinary occurrence.  This occurrence was convincingly communicated to a wide range of people including Jewish leaders, Roman officials and Gentiles who had been worshiping pagan gods.  This all happened in a short time frame subsequent to the crucifixion, as documented in several historical works outside of the Biblical scriptures. 

CONCLUSION:

       There is a preponderance of evidence to conclude that the resurrection took place. The sudden and rapid growth of Christianity shortly after the Christ event strongly points to the validity of the resurrection as the impetus for this sudden and rapid development.  The Biblical and secular history of persecution and death that Christians were willing to suffer gives additional credence to  the resurrection having taken place.  Many disciples of Christ were willing to die for their conviction that Christ, who was dead, was now alive.   Such behavior occurred within a short time of the purported resurrection.   The opportunity was there to disprove the resurrection actuality occurred.  Yet we find the behavior of the Christians to strongly support the reality of the resurrection. Much of the Jewish leadership was vehemently opposed to the developing Christian faith.  Yet they were unable to prevent thousands of their own flock from accepting the Christian message.  Something extraordinary had happened.  I submit it was the resurrection of Jesus Christ

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