What is Reddit's opinion of
The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
By popularity on Reddit, this product is:
21 reviews of this product found across Reddit:
Strobel is not a credible scholar/historian. Check out some of Dale Allison’s work. He is much more humble about what we can know and realistic in his approach. He’s also a first-rate scholar. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Resurrection-Jesus-Apologetics-Polemics-History/dp/0567697568
>The fact that you can't justify phrases like "gradual embellishment of a historical event" from a methodological naturalistic perspective is the moment when you abandoned your previous discussion with me.
It's not exactly controversial to say that many New Testament narratives probably have a historical core, which was embellished to form the final version we see in the text. Allison (2021) gives some examples:
>John baptized Jesus although that event, as it appears in the synoptics, has a divine voice speaking from heaven; and the Romans crucified Jesus, even if piety has embroidered the passion narratives. In like manner, Jesus was probably laid in a tomb which some women later found empty, and Christian imagination turned their report into a dramatic story that grew in the telling.
Then again, seeing as you dismissed Allison (arguably the most respected historical Jesus scholar alive today) as "a theologian who doesn't write from a historical perspective," I'm sure that's not good enough either.
>You behave like we can't see your post history... Best of luck with that.
Oh no, people might see that I... had a discussion with you last night about the philosophy of methodological naturalism? Damn, I'm ruined!
Speaking as an ex-Muslim, I would argue that the best reason to be a Christian (as opposed to a Jew or Muslim) is the resurrection of Jesus. To quote philosopher Anthony Flew (himself a lifelong opponent of Christianity):
>"The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity."
Whether or not this counts as a "proof" of Christianity, I nevertheless think Flew was correct in his assessment. To see why, let's go over the evidence, separating it out by topic. We'll start with the empty tomb.
The Empty Tomb
Our best evidence indicates that the story of Jesus’ empty tomb “probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical” (Allison, 2021, p. 202). Dale Allison writes that “of our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker” (p. 162). Similarly, Michael Grant (an agnostic) wrote that historians “cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb,” stating “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was empty” (1999, p. 176). Historian Geza Vermes (a secular Jew) wrote:
>"[In] the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be… that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb." - Jesus the Jew (1981), p. 41.
These historians are not alone in their views. Indeed, one survey of scholarly opinion found that “those who embrace the empty tomb as historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority” (Habermas, 2005, p. 141). This is hardly surprising; after all, “at the historical level it is very hard to explain how the belief in Jesus’ resurrection arose unless his tomb was empty” (Dunn, 1985, p. 76). Dale Allison writes that “If there was no reason to believe that [Jesus’] solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason” (2005, p. 324-325). In addition, we have good evidence that the early Christians did not invent the story; as Geza Vermes put it:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. [...] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - The Resurrection (2008), p. 140.
It thus appears to be more probable than not that Jesus' tomb really was found empty on the first Easter morning. With that in mind, let's move on to discussing the appearances of Jesus to the disciples and Paul.
The Appearances
After the crucifixion, the disciples began to see things which they interpreted as Jesus risen from the dead. The consensus of historical scholars is well summarized by E.P. Sanders, who wrote:
>"That the followers of Jesus (and, later, also Paul) had experiences of resurrection is, in my opinion, a historical fact. I do not consider deliberate frauds as a useful explanation. Many of these people spent the rest of their life proclaiming to have seen the Lord resurrected, and many of them would die because of this." - The Historical Figure of Jesus (1996), p. 279-280.
Similarly, Gerd Ludemann (an agnostic) writes that
>"It may be considered historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after the death of Jesus, in which Jesus appeared to them as the resurrected Christ” (1995, p. 80).
Of course, the common skeptical reply is to claim that the disciples were hallucinating, caught up in a frenzy of grief and religious fervor. But this explanation can only get us so far; to quote Dale Allison, “One person can hallucinate, but twelve at the same time? And dozens over an extended period of time? These are legitimate questions, and waving the magical wand of ‘mass hysteria’ will not make them vanish” (2005, p. 269).
It is also worth noting that not all those who saw the risen Jesus had been his disciples before the crucifixion; most notably, the apostle Paul was a self-admitted persecutor of Christians before he was converted by his vision on the Damascus road. This point was even acknowledged by Anthony Flew, a well-known philosopher and lifelong opponent of Christianity. To quote:
>"The evidence of Paul is certainly important, and strong, precisely because he was a convert. He was not a prior believer, he was not an apostle… [rather,] he had been an active opponent. I think this has to be accepted as one of the most powerful bits of evidence that there is, precisely because he was converted by his vision." - Debate with Gary Habermas (2003).
With this in mind, it is difficult to dismiss the resurrection appearances as mere grief hallucinations; why would Paul have felt grief for a man he never met, and whose followers he was actively persecuting?
Assessing the Total Evidence
Taking all of these facts into consideration, Maurice Casey (a noted atheist and acclaimed scholar of early Christianity) wrote that “the historical evidence is in no way inconsistent with the belief of the first disciples, and of many modern Christians, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and granted visions of the risen Jesus to some of the first disciples, and to St. Paul on the Damascus Road" (2010, p. 498). Elsewhere, Dale Allison observes that the circumstances of Christianity’s birth are without parallel in recorded human history, writing:
>"Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision of at least one hostile outsider [i.e. the apostle Paul]. Taken as a whole, this is, on any account, a remarkable, even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a good, substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it." - The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (2021), p. 346.
In short, if Christianity is not true, then it is the product of the most outlandish series of coincidences that the world has ever seen. We can also give some estimates for the probability that the resurrection occurred. After assessing the historical data, and assuming a 50% chance that God exists, Richard Swinburne (a professor of philosophy at Oxford University) used Bayes’ theorem to calculate the probability of Jesus’ resurrection, with the result being that “the total evidence gives a probability of 97/100 that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead” (2013, p. 251). Elsewhere, Stephen T. Davis (of Claremont McKenna College) estimates a probability of “well over [50%]” that the resurrection occurred (2021, p. 21). Of course, these numbers are highly contested, but the aforementioned evidence makes it at least reasonable to believe that the resurrection of Jesus occurred.
Speaking as an ex-Muslim, I would argue that the best reason to become a Christian (as opposed to a Jew or Muslim) is the resurrection of Jesus. To quote philosopher Anthony Flew (himself a lifelong opponent of Christianity):
>"The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity."
I think Flew was correct about this. To see why, let's go over the evidence, separating it out by topic. We'll start with the empty tomb.
The Empty Tomb
Our best evidence indicates that the story of Jesus’ empty tomb “probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical” (Allison, 2021, p. 202). Dale Allison writes that “of our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker” (p. 162). Similarly, Michael Grant (an agnostic) wrote that historians “cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb,” stating “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was empty” (1999, p. 176). Historian Geza Vermes (a secular Jew) wrote:
>"[In] the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be… that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb." - Jesus the Jew (1981), p. 41.
These historians are not alone in their views. Indeed, one survey of scholarly opinion found that “those who embrace the empty tomb as historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority” (Habermas, 2005, p. 141). This is hardly surprising; after all, “at the historical level it is very hard to explain how the belief in Jesus’ resurrection arose unless his tomb was empty” (Dunn, 1985, p. 76). Dale Allison writes that “If there was no reason to believe that [Jesus’] solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason” (2005, p. 324-325). In addition, we have good evidence that the early Christians did not invent the story; as Geza Vermes put it:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. [...] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - The Resurrection (2008), p. 140.
It thus appears to be more probable than not that Jesus' tomb really was found empty on the first Easter morning. With that in mind, let's move on to discussing the appearances of Jesus to the disciples and Paul.
The Appearances
After the crucifixion, the disciples began to see things which they interpreted as Jesus risen from the dead. The consensus of historical scholars is well summarized by E.P. Sanders, who wrote:
>"That the followers of Jesus (and, later, also Paul) had experiences of resurrection is, in my opinion, a historical fact. I do not consider deliberate frauds as a useful explanation. Many of these people spent the rest of their life proclaiming to have seen the Lord resurrected, and many of them would die because of this." - The Historical Figure of Jesus (1996), p. 279-280.
Similarly, Gerd Ludemann (an agnostic) writes that
>"It may be considered historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after the death of Jesus, in which Jesus appeared to them as the resurrected Christ” (1995, p. 80).
Of course, the common skeptical reply is to claim that the disciples were hallucinating, caught up in a frenzy of grief and religious fervor. But this explanation can only get us so far; to quote Dale Allison, “One person can hallucinate, but twelve at the same time? And dozens over an extended period of time? These are legitimate questions, and waving the magical wand of ‘mass hysteria’ will not make them vanish” (2005, p. 269).
It is also worth noting that not all those who saw the risen Jesus had been his disciples before the crucifixion; most notably, the apostle Paul was a self-admitted persecutor of Christians before he was converted by his vision on the Damascus road. This point was even acknowledged by Anthony Flew, a well-known philosopher and lifelong opponent of Christianity. To quote:
>"The evidence of Paul is certainly important, and strong, precisely because he was a convert. He was not a prior believer, he was not an apostle… [rather,] he had been an active opponent. I think this has to be accepted as one of the most powerful bits of evidence that there is, precisely because he was converted by his vision." - Debate with Gary Habermas (2003).
With this in mind, it is difficult to dismiss the resurrection appearances as mere grief hallucinations; why would Paul have felt grief for a man he never met, and whose followers he was actively persecuting?
Assessing the Total Evidence
Taking all of these facts into consideration, Maurice Casey (a noted atheist and acclaimed scholar of early Christianity) wrote that “the historical evidence is in no way inconsistent with the belief of the first disciples, and of many modern Christians, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and granted visions of the risen Jesus to some of the first disciples, and to St. Paul on the Damascus Road" (2010, p. 498). Elsewhere, Dale Allison observes that the circumstances of Christianity’s birth are without parallel in recorded human history, writing:
>"Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision of at least one hostile outsider [i.e. the apostle Paul]. Taken as a whole, this is, on any account, a remarkable, even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a good, substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it." - The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (2021), p. 346.
In short, if Christianity is not true, then it is the product of the most outlandish series of coincidences that the world has ever seen. We can also give some estimates for the probability that the resurrection occurred. After assessing the historical data, and assuming a 50% chance that God exists, Richard Swinburne (a professor of philosophy at Oxford University) used Bayes’ theorem to calculate the probability of Jesus’ resurrection, with the result being that “the total evidence gives a probability of 97/100 that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead” (2013, p. 251). Elsewhere, Stephen T. Davis (of Claremont McKenna College) estimates a probability of “well over [50%]” that the resurrection occurred (2021, p. 21). Of course, these numbers are highly contested, but the aforementioned evidence makes it at least reasonable to believe that the resurrection of Jesus occurred.
Except most historians actually agree on the historicity on the empty tomb, as well as the appearances to the disciples. Just for fun (since I don't think you clicked on the link I provided), here's a brief summary.
The Empty Tomb
Our best evidence indicates that the story of Jesus’ empty tomb “probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical” (Allison, 2021, p. 202). Dale Allison writes that “of our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker” (p. 162). Similarly, Michael Grant (an agnostic) wrote that historians “cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb,” stating “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was empty” (1999, p. 176). Historian Geza Vermes (a secular Jew) wrote:
>"[In] the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be… that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb." - Jesus the Jew (1981), p. 41.
These historians are not alone in their views. Indeed, one survey of scholarly opinion found that “those who embrace the empty tomb as historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority” (Habermas, 2005, p. 141). This is hardly surprising; after all, “at the historical level it is very hard to explain how the belief in Jesus’ resurrection arose unless his tomb was empty” (Dunn, 1985, p. 76). Dale Allison writes that “If there was no reason to believe that [Jesus’] solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason” (2005, p. 324-325). In addition, we have good evidence that the early Christians did not invent the story; as Geza Vermes put it:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. [...] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - The Resurrection (2008), p. 140.
It thus appears to be more probable than not that Jesus' tomb really was found empty on the first Easter morning. With that in mind, let's move on to discussing the appearances of Jesus to the disciples and Paul.
The Appearances
After the crucifixion, the disciples began to see things which they interpreted as Jesus risen from the dead. The consensus of historical scholars is well summarized by E.P. Sanders, who wrote:
>"That the followers of Jesus (and, later, also Paul) had experiences of resurrection is, in my opinion, a historical fact. I do not consider deliberate frauds as a useful explanation. Many of these people spent the rest of their life proclaiming to have seen the Lord resurrected, and many of them would die because of this." - The Historical Figure of Jesus (1996), p. 279-280.
Similarly, Gerd Ludemann (an agnostic) writes that
>"It may be considered historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after the death of Jesus, in which Jesus appeared to them as the resurrected Christ” (1995, p. 80).
Of course, the common skeptical reply is to claim that the disciples were hallucinating, caught up in a frenzy of grief and religious fervor. But this explanation can only get us so far; to quote Dale Allison, “One person can hallucinate, but twelve at the same time? And dozens over an extended period of time? These are legitimate questions, and waving the magical wand of ‘mass hysteria’ will not make them vanish” (2005, p. 269).
It is also worth noting that not all those who saw the risen Jesus had been his disciples before the crucifixion; most notably, the apostle Paul was a self-admitted persecutor of Christians before he was converted by his vision on the Damascus road. This point was even acknowledged by Anthony Flew, a well-known philosopher and lifelong opponent of Christianity. To quote:
>"The evidence of Paul is certainly important, and strong, precisely because he was a convert. He was not a prior believer, he was not an apostle… [rather,] he had been an active opponent. I think this has to be accepted as one of the most powerful bits of evidence that there is, precisely because he was converted by his vision." - Debate with Gary Habermas (2003).
With this in mind, it is difficult to dismiss the resurrection appearances as mere grief hallucinations; why would Paul have felt grief for a man he never met, and whose followers he was actively persecuting?
I would argue that the best reason to become a Christian (as opposed to a Jew or Muslim) is the resurrection of Jesus. To quote philosopher Anthony Flew (himself a lifelong opponent of Christianity):
>"The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity."
I think Flew was correct about this. To see why, let's go over the evidence, separating it out by topic. We'll start with the empty tomb.
The Empty Tomb
Our best evidence indicates that the story of Jesus’ empty tomb “probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical” (Allison, 2021, p. 202). Dale Allison writes that “of our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker” (p. 162). Similarly, Michael Grant (an agnostic) wrote that historians “cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb,” stating “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was empty” (1999, p. 176). Historian Geza Vermes (a secular Jew) wrote:
>"[In] the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be… that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb." - Jesus the Jew (1981), p. 41.
These historians are not alone in their views. Indeed, one survey of scholarly opinion found that “those who embrace the empty tomb as historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority” (Habermas, 2005, p. 141). This is hardly surprising; after all, “at the historical level it is very hard to explain how the belief in Jesus’ resurrection arose unless his tomb was empty” (Dunn, 1985, p. 76). Dale Allison writes that “If there was no reason to believe that [Jesus’] solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason” (2005, p. 324-325). In addition, we have good evidence that the early Christians did not invent the story; as Geza Vermes put it:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. [...] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - The Resurrection (2008), p. 140.
It thus appears to be more probable than not that Jesus' tomb really was found empty on the first Easter morning. With that in mind, let's move on to discussing the appearances of Jesus to the disciples and Paul.
The Appearances
After the crucifixion, the disciples began to see things which they interpreted as Jesus risen from the dead. The consensus of historical scholars is well summarized by E.P. Sanders, who wrote:
>"That the followers of Jesus (and, later, also Paul) had experiences of resurrection is, in my opinion, a historical fact. I do not consider deliberate frauds as a useful explanation. Many of these people spent the rest of their life proclaiming to have seen the Lord resurrected, and many of them would die because of this." - The Historical Figure of Jesus (1996), p. 279-280.
Similarly, Gerd Ludemann (an agnostic) writes that
>"It may be considered historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after the death of Jesus, in which Jesus appeared to them as the resurrected Christ” (1995, p. 80).
Of course, the common skeptical reply is to claim that the disciples were hallucinating, caught up in a frenzy of grief and religious fervor. But this explanation can only get us so far; to quote Dale Allison, “One person can hallucinate, but twelve at the same time? And dozens over an extended period of time? These are legitimate questions, and waving the magical wand of ‘mass hysteria’ will not make them vanish” (2005, p. 269).
It is also worth noting that not all those who saw the risen Jesus had been his disciples before the crucifixion; most notably, the apostle Paul was a self-admitted persecutor of Christians before he was converted by his vision on the Damascus road. This point was even acknowledged by Anthony Flew, a well-known philosopher and lifelong opponent of Christianity. To quote:
>"The evidence of Paul is certainly important, and strong, precisely because he was a convert. He was not a prior believer, he was not an apostle… [rather,] he had been an active opponent. I think this has to be accepted as one of the most powerful bits of evidence that there is, precisely because he was converted by his vision." - Debate with Gary Habermas (2003).
With this in mind, it is difficult to dismiss the resurrection appearances as mere grief hallucinations; why would Paul have felt grief for a man he never met, and whose followers he was actively persecuting?
Assessing the Total Evidence
Taking all of these facts into consideration, Maurice Casey (a noted atheist and acclaimed scholar of early Christianity) wrote that “the historical evidence is in no way inconsistent with the belief of the first disciples, and of many modern Christians, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and granted visions of the risen Jesus to some of the first disciples, and to St. Paul on the Damascus Road" (2010, p. 498). Elsewhere, Dale Allison observes that the circumstances of Christianity’s birth are without parallel in recorded human history, writing:
>"Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision of at least one hostile outsider [i.e. the apostle Paul]. Taken as a whole, this is, on any account, a remarkable, even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a good, substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it." - The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (2021), p. 346.
In short, if Christianity is not true, then it is the product of the most outlandish series of coincidences that the world has ever seen. We can also give some estimates for the probability that the resurrection occurred. After assessing the historical data, and assuming a 50% chance that God exists, Richard Swinburne (a professor of philosophy at Oxford University) used Bayes’ theorem to calculate the probability of Jesus’ resurrection, with the result being that “the total evidence gives a probability of 97/100 that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead” (2013, p. 251). Elsewhere, Stephen T. Davis (of Claremont McKenna College) estimates a probability of “well over [50%]” that the resurrection occurred (2021, p. 21). Of course, these numbers are highly contested, but the aforementioned evidence makes it at least reasonable to believe that the resurrection of Jesus occurred.
Well, no evidence is a bit strong. To quote philosopher Anthony Flew (himself a lifelong opponent of Christianity):
>"The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity."
I think Flew was correct about this. To see why, let's go over the evidence, separating it out by topic. We'll start with the empty tomb.
The Empty Tomb
Our best evidence indicates that the story of Jesus’ empty tomb “probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical” (Allison, 2021, p. 202). Dale Allison writes that “of our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker” (p. 162). Similarly, Michael Grant (an agnostic) wrote that historians “cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb,” stating “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was empty” (1999, p. 176). Historian Geza Vermes (a secular Jew) wrote:
>"[In] the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be… that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb." - Jesus the Jew (1981), p. 41.
These historians are not alone in their views. Indeed, one survey of scholarly opinion found that “those who embrace the empty tomb as historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority” (Habermas, 2005, p. 141). This is hardly surprising; after all, “at the historical level it is very hard to explain how the belief in Jesus’ resurrection arose unless his tomb was empty” (Dunn, 1985, p. 76). Dale Allison writes that “If there was no reason to believe that [Jesus’] solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason” (2005, p. 324-325). In addition, we have good evidence that the early Christians did not invent the story; as Geza Vermes put it:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. [...] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - The Resurrection (2008), p. 140.
It thus appears to be more probable than not that Jesus' tomb really was found empty on the first Easter morning. With that in mind, let's move on to discussing the appearances of Jesus to the disciples and Paul.
The Appearances
After the crucifixion, the disciples began to see things which they interpreted as Jesus risen from the dead. The consensus of historical scholars is well summarized by E.P. Sanders, who wrote:
>"That the followers of Jesus (and, later, also Paul) had experiences of resurrection is, in my opinion, a historical fact. I do not consider deliberate frauds as a useful explanation. Many of these people spent the rest of their life proclaiming to have seen the Lord resurrected, and many of them would die because of this." - The Historical Figure of Jesus (1996), p. 279-280.
Similarly, Gerd Ludemann (an agnostic) writes that
>"It may be considered historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after the death of Jesus, in which Jesus appeared to them as the resurrected Christ” (1995, p. 80).
Of course, the common skeptical reply is to claim that the disciples were hallucinating, caught up in a frenzy of grief and religious fervor. But this explanation can only get us so far; to quote Dale Allison, “One person can hallucinate, but twelve at the same time? And dozens over an extended period of time? These are legitimate questions, and waving the magical wand of ‘mass hysteria’ will not make them vanish” (2005, p. 269).
It is also worth noting that not all those who saw the risen Jesus had been his disciples before the crucifixion; most notably, the apostle Paul was a self-admitted persecutor of Christians before he was converted by his vision on the Damascus road. This point was even acknowledged by Anthony Flew, a well-known philosopher and lifelong opponent of Christianity. To quote:
>"The evidence of Paul is certainly important, and strong, precisely because he was a convert. He was not a prior believer, he was not an apostle… [rather,] he had been an active opponent. I think this has to be accepted as one of the most powerful bits of evidence that there is, precisely because he was converted by his vision." - Debate with Gary Habermas (2003).
With this in mind, it is difficult to dismiss the resurrection appearances as mere grief hallucinations; why would Paul have felt grief for a man he never met, and whose followers he was actively persecuting?
Assessing the Total Evidence
Taking all of these facts into consideration, Maurice Casey (a noted atheist and acclaimed scholar of early Christianity) wrote that “the historical evidence is in no way inconsistent with the belief of the first disciples, and of many modern Christians, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and granted visions of the risen Jesus to some of the first disciples, and to St. Paul on the Damascus Road" (2010, p. 498). Elsewhere, Dale Allison observes that the circumstances of Christianity’s birth are without parallel in recorded human history, writing:
>"Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision of at least one hostile outsider [i.e. the apostle Paul]. Taken as a whole, this is, on any account, a remarkable, even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a good, substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it." - The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (2021), p. 346.
In short, if Christianity is not true, then it is the product of the most outlandish series of coincidences that the world has ever seen. We can also give some estimates for the probability that the resurrection occurred. After assessing the historical data, and assuming a 50% chance that God exists, Richard Swinburne (a professor of philosophy at Oxford University) used Bayes’ theorem to calculate the probability of Jesus’ resurrection, with the result being that “the total evidence gives a probability of 97/100 that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead” (2013, p. 251). Elsewhere, Stephen T. Davis (of Claremont McKenna College) estimates a probability of “well over [50%]” that the resurrection occurred (2021, p. 21). Of course, these numbers are highly contested, but the aforementioned evidence makes it at least reasonable to believe that the resurrection of Jesus occurred.
Introduction
I do believe in the literal resurrection; I think that once one grants the existence of God, the evidence is sufficient to justify belief in it. To quote philosopher Anthony Flew (himself a lifelong opponent of Christianity):
>"The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity."
I think Flew was correct about this. To see why, let's go over the evidence, separating it out by topic. We'll start with the empty tomb.
The Empty Tomb
Our best evidence indicates that the story of Jesus’ empty tomb “probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical” (Allison, 2021, p. 202). Dale Allison writes that “of our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker” (p. 162). Similarly, Michael Grant (an agnostic) wrote that historians “cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb,” stating “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was empty” (1999, p. 176). Historian Geza Vermes (a secular Jew) wrote:
>"[In] the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be… that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb." - Jesus the Jew (1981), p. 41.
These historians are not alone in their views. Indeed, one survey of scholarly opinion found that “those who embrace the empty tomb as historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority” (Habermas, 2005, p. 141). This is hardly surprising; after all, “at the historical level it is very hard to explain how the belief in Jesus’ resurrection arose unless his tomb was empty” (Dunn, 1985, p. 76). Dale Allison writes that “If there was no reason to believe that [Jesus’] solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason” (2005, p. 324-325). In addition, we have good evidence that the early Christians did not invent the story; as Geza Vermes put it:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. [...] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - The Resurrection (2008), p. 140.
It thus appears to be more probable than not that Jesus' tomb really was found empty on the first Easter morning. With that in mind, let's move on to discussing the appearances of Jesus to the disciples and Paul.
The Appearances
After the crucifixion, the disciples began to see things which they interpreted as Jesus risen from the dead. The consensus of historical scholars is well summarized by E.P. Sanders, who wrote:
>"That the followers of Jesus (and, later, also Paul) had experiences of resurrection is, in my opinion, a historical fact. I do not consider deliberate frauds as a useful explanation. Many of these people spent the rest of their life proclaiming to have seen the Lord resurrected, and many of them would die because of this." - The Historical Figure of Jesus (1996), p. 279-280.
Similarly, Gerd Ludemann (an agnostic) writes that
>"It may be considered historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after the death of Jesus, in which Jesus appeared to them as the resurrected Christ” (1995, p. 80).
Of course, the common skeptical reply is to claim that the disciples were hallucinating, caught up in a frenzy of grief and religious fervor. But this explanation can only get us so far; to quote Dale Allison, “One person can hallucinate, but twelve at the same time? And dozens over an extended period of time? These are legitimate questions, and waving the magical wand of ‘mass hysteria’ will not make them vanish” (2005, p. 269).
It is also worth noting that not all those who saw the risen Jesus had been his disciples before the crucifixion; most notably, the apostle Paul was a self-admitted persecutor of Christians before he was converted by his vision on the Damascus road. This point was even acknowledged by Anthony Flew, a well-known philosopher and lifelong opponent of Christianity. To quote:
>"The evidence of Paul is certainly important, and strong, precisely because he was a convert. He was not a prior believer, he was not an apostle… [rather,] he had been an active opponent. I think this has to be accepted as one of the most powerful bits of evidence that there is, precisely because he was converted by his vision." - Debate with Gary Habermas (2003).
With this in mind, it is difficult to dismiss the resurrection appearances as mere grief hallucinations; why would Paul have felt grief for a man he never met, and whose followers he was actively persecuting?
Assessing the Total Evidence
Taking all of these facts into consideration, Maurice Casey (a noted atheist and acclaimed scholar of early Christianity) wrote that “the historical evidence is in no way inconsistent with the belief of the first disciples, and of many modern Christians, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and granted visions of the risen Jesus to some of the first disciples, and to St. Paul on the Damascus Road" (2010, p. 498). Elsewhere, Dale Allison observes that the circumstances of Christianity’s birth are without parallel in recorded human history, writing:
>"Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision of at least one hostile outsider [i.e. the apostle Paul]. Taken as a whole, this is, on any account, a remarkable, even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a good, substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it." - The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (2021), p. 346.
In short, if Christianity is not true, then it is the product of the most outlandish series of coincidences that the world has ever seen. We can also give some estimates for the probability that the resurrection occurred. After assessing the historical data, and assuming a 50% chance that God exists, Richard Swinburne (a professor of philosophy at Oxford University) used Bayes’ theorem to calculate the probability of Jesus’ resurrection, with the result being that “the total evidence gives a probability of 97/100 that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead” (2013, p. 251). Elsewhere, Stephen T. Davis (of Claremont McKenna College) estimates a probability of “well over [50%]” that the resurrection occurred (2021, p. 21). Of course, these numbers are highly contested, but the aforementioned evidence makes it at least reasonable to believe that the resurrection of Jesus occurred.
Introduction
It is impossible to prove that something miraculous has occurred. Modern historiography typically employs methodological naturalism, putting events like the resurrection of Jesus well beyond its purview. That being said, I (and many others) would argue that the evidence we do have renders the resurrection, if not proven, then at the very least something that reasonable people can believe in. Let's divide our assessment up by topic.
The Empty Tomb
Our best evidence indicates that the story of Jesus’ empty tomb “probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical” (Allison, 2021, p. 202). Dale Allison writes that “of our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker” (p. 162). Similarly, Michael Grant (an agnostic) wrote that historians “cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb,” stating “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was empty” (1999, p. 176). Historian Geza Vermes (a secular Jew) wrote:
>"[In] the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be… that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb." - Jesus the Jew (1981), p. 41.
These historians are not alone in their views. Indeed, one survey of scholarly opinion found that “those who embrace the empty tomb as historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority” (Habermas, 2005, p. 141). This is hardly surprising; after all, “at the historical level it is very hard to explain how the belief in Jesus’ resurrection arose unless his tomb was empty” (Dunn, 1985, p. 76). Dale Allison writes that “If there was no reason to believe that [Jesus’] solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason” (2005, p. 324-325). In addition, we have good evidence that the early Christians did not invent the story; as Geza Vermes put it:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. [...] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - The Resurrection (2008), p. 140.
It thus appears to be more probable than not that Jesus' tomb really was found empty on the first Easter morning. With that in mind, let's move on to discussing the appearances of Jesus to the disciples and Paul.
The Appearances
After the crucifixion, the disciples began to see things which they interpreted as Jesus risen from the dead. The consensus of historical scholars is well summarized by E.P. Sanders, who wrote:
>"That the followers of Jesus (and, later, also Paul) had experiences of resurrection is, in my opinion, a historical fact. I do not consider deliberate frauds as a useful explanation. Many of these people spent the rest of their life proclaiming to have seen the Lord resurrected, and many of them would die because of this." - The Historical Figure of Jesus (1996), p. 279-280.
Similarly, Gerd Ludemann (an agnostic) writes that
>"It may be considered historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after the death of Jesus, in which Jesus appeared to them as the resurrected Christ” (1995, p. 80).
Of course, the common skeptical reply is to claim that the disciples were hallucinating, caught up in a frenzy of grief and religious fervor. But this explanation can only get us so far; to quote Dale Allison, “One person can hallucinate, but twelve at the same time? And dozens over an extended period of time? These are legitimate questions, and waving the magical wand of ‘mass hysteria’ will not make them vanish” (2005, p. 269).
It is also worth noting that not all those who saw the risen Jesus had been his disciples before the crucifixion; most notably, the apostle Paul was a self-admitted persecutor of Christians before he was converted by his vision on the Damascus road. This point was even acknowledged by Anthony Flew, a well-known philosopher and lifelong opponent of Christianity. To quote:
>"The evidence of Paul is certainly important, and strong, precisely because he was a convert. He was not a prior believer, he was not an apostle… [rather,] he had been an active opponent. I think this has to be accepted as one of the most powerful bits of evidence that there is, precisely because he was converted by his vision." - Debate with Gary Habermas (2003).
With this in mind, it is difficult to dismiss the resurrection appearances as mere grief hallucinations; why would Paul have felt grief for a man he never met, and whose followers he was actively persecuting?
Assessing the Total Evidence
Taking all of these facts into consideration, Maurice Casey (a noted atheist and acclaimed scholar of early Christianity) wrote that “the historical evidence is in no way inconsistent with the belief of the first disciples, and of many modern Christians, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and granted visions of the risen Jesus to some of the first disciples, and to St. Paul on the Damascus Road" (2010, p. 498). Elsewhere, Dale Allison observes that the circumstances of Christianity’s birth are without parallel in recorded human history, writing:
>"Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision of at least one hostile outsider [i.e. the apostle Paul]. Taken as a whole, this is, on any account, a remarkable, even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a good, substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it." - The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (2021), p.
In short, if Christianity is not true, then it is the product of the most outlandish series of coincidences that the world has ever seen. We can also give some estimates for the probability that the resurrection occurred. After assessing the historical data, and assuming a 50% chance that God exists, Richard Swinburne (a professor of philosophy at Oxford University) used Bayes’ theorem to calculate the probability of Jesus’ resurrection, with the result being that “the total evidence gives a probability of 97/100 that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead” (2013, p. 251). Elsewhere, Stephen T. Davis (of Claremont McKenna College) estimates a probability of “well over [50%]” that the resurrection occurred (2021, p. 21). Of course, these numbers are highly contested, but the aforementioned evidence makes it at least reasonable to believe that the resurrection of Jesus occurred.
There's a big difference between "it's true, see the Bible says so right here!" and "critical scholars think that this is what actually happened." Of course the New Testament is going to be a relevant source here; the point of my post is that secular scholars are able to draw on the NT to determine which aspects of it are historical, and it just so happens that there is a strong case to be made for both the empty tomb and the appearances.
>One can say the same about Islam. Just because billions of people believe it to be true and have people with PhDs stating their reasoning, doesn't actually make it true.
If the argument I made was "billions of people are Christians, therefore Jesus was resurrected," then that would be a fair reply. But of course, that isn't the argument that anyone is making. To quote again the passage from Allison that you're referencing:
>"Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision of at least one hostile outsider [i.e. the apostle Paul]. Taken as a whole, this is, on any account, a remarkable, even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a good, substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it." - The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (2021), p. 346.
There is no comparable claim that can be for Islam. This is why Anthony Flew, himself a lifelong opponent of Christianity, said the following:
>"The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity."
So no, you can't say the same for Islam.
>Both of them heavily rely on scaring people with hell and their numbers of believers rival each other, showing that these threats of hell are powerful enough to create mass obedience to the religion.
The earliest Christians didn't teach a doctrine of eternal hell, so using that as an explanation for the spread of Christianity is simply nonsensical (incidentally, Islam did teach an eternal hell from the very beginning). Also, even if they had taught that, it wouldn't explain the spread of the religion; just because a group of small rabble-rousers start threatening people with hell, that's no reason to suppose anybody would actually believe them. Even today we have small cults claiming that everybody but them is doomed forever, and that you need to get on board if you want the UFO to pick you up; does anybody actually believe them? Of course not. As such, using this as an explanation for early Christianity (even ignoring the fact that they taught no such thing) is just fallacious.
It is impossible to prove that something miraculous has occurred. Modern historiography typically employs methodological naturalism, putting events like the resurrection of Jesus well beyond its purview. That being said, I (and many others) would argue that the evidence we do have makes belief in the resurrection, if not provable, then at the very least reasonable.
For instance, the evidence indicates that the story of Jesus’ empty tomb “probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical” (Allison, 2021, p. 202). Dale Allison writes that “of our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker” (p. 162). Similarly, Michael Grant (an agnostic) wrote that historians “cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb,” stating “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was empty” (1999, p. 176). Historian Geza Vermes (a secular Jew) wrote:
>"[In] the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be… that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb." - Jesus the Jew (1981), p. 41.
These historians are not alone in their views. Indeed, one survey of scholarly opinion found that “those who embrace the empty tomb as historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority” (Habermas, 2005, p. 141). This is hardly surprising; after all, “at the historical level it is very hard to explain how the belief in Jesus’ resurrection arose unless his tomb was empty” (Dunn, 1985, p. 76). Dale Allison writes that “If there was no reason to believe that [Jesus’] solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason” (2005, p. 324-325). In addition, we have good evidence that the early Christians did not invent the story; as Geza Vermes put it:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. [...] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - The Resurrection (2008), p. 140.
Similarly, after the crucifixion, the disciples began to see things which they interpreted as Jesus risen from the dead. The consensus of historical scholars is well summarized by E.P. Sanders, who wrote:
>"That the followers of Jesus (and, later, also Paul) had experiences of resurrection is, in my opinion, a historical fact. I do not consider deliberate frauds as a useful explanation. Many of these people spent the rest of their life proclaiming to have seen the Lord resurrected, and many of them would die because of this." - The Historical Figure of Jesus (1996), p. 279-280.
Similarly, Gerd Ludemann (an agnostic) writes that
>"It may be considered historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after the death of Jesus, in which Jesus appeared to them as the resurrected Christ” (1995, p. 80).
Taking all of these facts into consideration, Maurice Casey (a noted atheist and
acclaimed scholar of early Christianity) wrote that “the historical evidence is in no way
inconsistent with the belief of the first disciples, and of many modern Christians, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and granted visions of the risen Jesus to some of the first disciples, and to St. Paul on the Damascus Road" (2010, p. 498). Elsewhere, Dale Allison observes that the circumstances of Christianity’s birth are without parallel in recorded human history, writing:
>"Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision
of at least one hostile outsider [i.e. the apostle Paul]. Taken as a whole, this is, on any
account, a remarkable, even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a
good, substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it." - The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (2021), p.
In short, if Christianity is not true, then it is the product of the most outlandish series of coincidences. We can also give some estimates for the probability that the resurrection occurred. After assessing the historical data, and assuming a 50% chance that God exists, Richard Swinburne (a professor of philosophy at Oxford University) used Bayes’ theorem to calculate the probability of Jesus’ resurrection, with the result being that “the total evidence gives a probability of 97/100 that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead” (2013, p. 251). Elsewhere, Stephen T. Davis (of Claremont McKenna College) estimates a probability of “well over [50%]” that the resurrection occurred (2021, p. 21). Of course, these numbers are highly contested, but the aforementioned evidence makes it at least reasonable to believe that the resurrection of Jesus occurred.
>Did Paul and the gospel writers have the same understanding of the resurrection?
It depends on who you ask, though there are certainly some prominent scholars who would say "yes." For instance, John Granger Cook (2018) argues that "there is no fundamental difference between Paul’s conception of the resurrection body and that of the Gospels." Elsewhere (2016), he writes that "Paul could not have conceived of a resurrection of Jesus unless he believed the tomb was empty." To quote:
>"Paul and his readers, Jewish or pagan, would have assumed that a tradition about the burial of Christ and his resurrection on the third day presupposed an empty tomb. [...] Spirits do not rise from the dead in ancient Judaism, people do." - pp. 56-58.
Likewise, James Ware (2014) argues that the 1 Cor. 15 creed "presupposes a narrative or narratives of the kind we see in the Synoptics and John, involving an empty tomb, and encounters with a Jesus risen in flesh and bones" (p. 498).
Of course, we should also remember that the mention of Jesus eating and the disciples touching his risen body are most likely later additions, meant to assuage apologetic anxiety about this very issue. According to Dale Allison (2021):
>"Luke 24:39 has the risen Jesus declare that he is not a πνεῦμα, a spirit or ghost. His proof is that he has σάρκα καὶ ὀστέα, flesh and bones. John 20:24-29 is of similar import, and in Jn 21:9-14, Jesus, returned from the dead, both cooks and serves food. [...] Much modern scholarship, however, regards thetexts just cited as relatively late and apologetical, perhaps even directed at an emerging docetism." - p. 226.
In other words, the general scholarly view is that the earliest Christians viewed Jesus' resurrection as physical in nature, though not "flesh-and-blood"; his corpse was believed to have been "transformed into a spiritual body," to quote Ehrman. Eventually, some Christian groups (such as the early docetists) began to challenge this view, arguing that Jesus had never really had a flesh-and-blood body to begin with, and/or that his resurrection had been a purely spiritual affair. Thus, texts like Luke 24:39 and John 20:24-29 were composed, in order to combat these emerging heretical views.
| Item | Current | Lowest | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics,… | - | - | 4.8/5.0 |
^Item Info | Bot Info | Trigger
Remember that for ancient people, "spiritual" did not necessary mean "non-physical"; that's a false dichotomy when speaking about second-temple Judaism. To quote Bart Ehrman, "Paul believed that Jesus corpse itself was transformed into a spiritual body. If asked, he would have said that the grave was empty." Similarly, Dale Allison (2021) writes that "we have no good evidence for belief in a nonphysical resurrection in Paul, much less in the primitive Jerusalem community" (p. 147). This is the majority view amongst scholars (see here.
| Item | Current | Lowest | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics,… | - | - | 4.8/5.0 |
| Jesus (Jesus Historian Rev Gosp Col PR) | - | - | 3.7/5.0 |
| Jesus the Jew | - | - | 4.1/5.0 |
| The Evidence for Jesus | - | - | 4.3/5.0 |
| Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradit… | - | - | 4.8/5.0 |
| The Historical Figure of Jesus | - | - | 4.5/5.0 |
^Item Info | Bot Info | Trigger
You seem to be asking a number of questions, some of which have contradictory answers. For example, when you ask "was the story of Christ's resurrection unique," the answer would have to be "no"; other people claimed that their religious leaders had been resurrected from the dead. However, when you ask "what is based on other mythology," I would also say "no," because it seems to have had a historical basis (at least for those that proclaimed it).
For instance, the evidence indicates that the story of Jesus’ empty tomb “probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical” (Allison, 2021). Dale Allison writes that “of our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker” (p. 162). Similarly, Michael Grant (an agnostic) wrote that historians “cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb,” stating “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was empty” (1999, p. 176). Historian Geza Vermes (a secular Jew) wrote:
>"[In] the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be… that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb." - Jesus the Jew (1981), p. 41.
These historians are not alone in their views. Indeed, one survey of scholarly opinion found that “those who embrace the empty tomb as historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority” (Habermas, 2005, p. 141). This is hardly surprising; after all, “at the historical level it is very hard to explain how the belief in Jesus’ resurrection arose unless his tomb was empty” (Dunn, 1985, p. 76). Dale Allison writes that “If there was no reason to believe that [Jesus’] solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason” (2005, p. 324-325). In addition, we have good evidence that the early Christians did not invent the story; as Geza Vermes put it:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their
testimony. [...] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to
demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform
and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - The Resurrection (2008), p. 140.
Similarly, after the crucifixion, the disciples began to see things which they interpreted as Jesus risen from the dead. The consensus of historical scholars is well summarized by E.P. Sanders, who wrote:
>"That the followers of Jesus (and, later, also Paul) had experiences of resurrection is, in
my opinion, a historical fact. I do not consider deliberate frauds as a useful explanation.
Many of these people spent the rest of their life proclaiming to have seen the Lord resurrected, and many of them would die because of this." - The Historical Figure of Jesus (1996), p. 279-280.
Similarly, Gerd Ludemann (an agnostic) writes that “It may be considered historically certain
that Peter and the disciples had experiences after the death of Jesus, in which Jesus appeared to them as the resurrected Christ” (1995, p. 80).
My point here is that they resurrection narratives cannot be fairly described as "based on" other stories, if (for those who proclaimed the resurrection) it had a real historical grounding. The first Christians did not see it as a story told to illustrate a point; rather, for them it was a real historical event, grounded in solid evidence (i.e. the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances). Whether one accepts the validity of their explanations or not, it is important to know what they were.
No problem! If you want to learn about the Sermon on the Mount, I really have to recommend the work of Dale Allison. He's arguably the most widely respected NT scholar alive today, and in addition to writing the definitive book on Jesus' resurrection, he also wrote the definitive commentary on Matthew, as well as a separate book on the Sermon on the Mount. He recently gave some interesting Zoom lectures on the topic, if you want a place to start.
This is one of the more frequently asked questions here, so I hope you'll forgive me for pasting an older answer that I gave. Dale Allison (arguably the greatest living NT scholar) just came out with a massive book on this topic, where he says that the empty tomb story "probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical" (p. 202). As he puts it:
>"[Of] our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker. [...] I am rather inclined to think, given the preceding pages, that the evidence moves us to a more traditional conclusion." - pp. 162-164
Our best available evidence indicates that the early Christians had a physical view of the resurrection, which would have logically entailed some kind of belief in an empty grave. We can look at Paul, for example; to quote Bart Ehrman, "Paul believed that Jesus' corpse itself was transformed into a spiritual body. If asked, he would have said that the grave was empty." John Granger Cook (2018) argues that "there is no fundamental difference between Paul’s conception of the resurrection body and that of the Gospels." Elsewhere (2016), he writes that "Paul could not have conceived of a resurrection of Jesus unless he believed the tomb was empty." To quote:
>"Paul and his readers, Jewish or pagan, would have assumed that a tradition about the burial of Christ and his resurrection on the third day presupposed an empty tomb. [...] Spirits do not rise from the dead in ancient Judaism, people do." - pp. 56-58
James Ware (2014) argues that the 1 Cor. 15 creed "presupposes a narrative or narratives of the kind we see in the Synoptics and John, involving an empty tomb, and encounters with a Jesus risen in flesh and bones" (p. 498). Since the creed itself is often dated to the first half of the 30s (see Ludemann 1994, p. 171; Goulder 1996, p. 48; Wedderburn 1999, p. 114; Metzger and Coogan 1993, p. 647), this (along with the evidence presented by Cook) would suggest that the belief in an empty tomb long predates all four of the canonical Gospels. Larry Hurtado (whose work you cited) takes a similar stance in his 2014 review of Ware's article; as he writes, "it’s clear that an empty tome figured in early traditions. What, otherwise, is the reference to Jesus being buried (1 Cor 15:1-7) if burial and tomb weren’t important?"
Some have argued that just because the early Christians believed in physical resurrection, that doesn't mean they would have had a specific tomb narrative. However, this strikes me as nonsensical; did the early Christians seriously have no narrative for the resurrection until Mark was written, forty years after-the-fact? Allison (2021) makes this point quite well:
>It is, to my mind, wholly implausible that early Christians would have been content with bare assertions devoid of concrete illustration or vivid detail. Were there no story-tellers until Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John showed up? First Corinthians 15:3-8 is skeletal, a bare-bones outline. It begs for more. How did Christ die, and why? Who buried him, and why? And in what way exactly did Jesus “appear” to people? Did such questions not interest anybody? [p. 41]
Elsewhere, Geza Vermes (2008) argues that the empty tomb story is "clearly an early tradition," and unlikely to have been a later ad-hoc invention. He notes that it lacks the characteristics that one would expect of a later, deliberately crafted story. To quote:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. [...] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - p. 140
Allison (2005)) notes that, without an empty tomb, the disciples' visions would not have been sufficient to convince them that Jesus had risen from the dead:
> "If there was no reason to believe that his solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason." - pp. 324-325
As for the later embellishments of the story, Allison notes that we see the same thing occurring for many other events throughout the gospels, including those which no serious scholars dispute. To quote:
>"John baptized Jesus although that event, as it appears in the synoptics, has a divine voice speaking from heaven; and the Romans crucified Jesus, even if piety has embroidered the passion narratives. In like manner, Jesus was probably laid in a tomb which some women later found empty, and Christian imagination turned their report into a dramatic story that grew in the telling.” - p. 163
In short, the story likely goes back to a historical core. It's presupposed by our earliest Christian writers; it doesn't bear the telltale signs of a deliberately forged narrative; it explains why
>If I say "John died" you can probably assume I also believe John ended up in a morgue at some point, because that's what generally happens when people die.
Yes, and if you also say "John was physically raised from the dead," we can also assume that you believe his grave is empty. That's my point. The Christians believed in physical resurrection, which logically necessitates a belief in an empty grave.
>If, in actual fact, there was no empty tomb, and consequently none of the disciples ever visited an empty tomb, and the belief in Jesus' resurrection was spawned entirely apart from any belief in an empty tomb, then naturally there wouldn't be any tomb narrative in the early years of the church, since there would be nothing to narrate.
This is begging the question. If you assume that there was no empty tomb, then you can cram any evidence into that hypothesis; the question is where the evidence naturally leads, and I (along with Allison, Ware, Cook, etc.) find it absurd to suppose that the early Christians went around saying "Jesus was raised from the dead" for forty years before anybody thought to ask for details.
>I guess someone would make something up eventually, and maybe that's the story that found its way into Mark.
But as Vermes points out, the story doesn't resemble a deliberately manufactured narrative. As noted above, this view also requires us to assume that the early Christians were proclaiming Jesus' bodily resurrection for years with no narrative of how they came to this position. Allison (2021) also points that visions alone would not likely have convinced this group of Jews (who already believed in ghosts) to accept that Jesus was physically resurrected.
>So then why didn't the evangelists cut the women from their gospels?
The evangelists include plenty of embarrassing details. For instance, they have John baptizing Jesus, which would have been widely taken as a sign of deference. John's Gospel even tries to fix this issue by having John the Baptist act reluctant, saying that he isn't worthy to baptize Jesus. Also, as Allison notes (see the above cited passage), other Gospel authors (such as Matthew) rush past and minimize the women. We know the early Christians regarded the role of women as embarrassing; the fact that it's included in the Gospels doesn't change that.
Just to start with, it's useful to give the reasons why many historians support the historicity of the empty tomb (forgive me for pasting my original comment). Dale Allison (arguably the greatest living NT scholar) just came out with a massive book on this topic, where he says "although Mk 16:1-8 is undoubtedly stylized drama in the service of Christian theology, the drama can go back to a real event" (p. 163). As he puts it:
>"[Of] our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker. [...] I am rather inclined to think, given the preceding pages, that the evidence moves us to a more traditional conclusion." - pp. 162-164
Our best available evidence indicates that the early Christians had a physical view of the resurrection. We can look at Paul, for example; to quote Bart Ehrman, "Paul believed that Jesus' corpse itself was transformed into a spiritual body. If asked, he would have said that the grave was empty." John Granger Cook (2018) argues that "there is no fundamental difference between Paul’s conception of the resurrection body and that of the Gospels." Elsewhere, (2016) he writes that "Paul could not have conceived of a resurrection of Jesus unless he believed the tomb was empty." To quote:
>"Paul and his readers, Jewish or pagan, would have assumed that a tradition about the burial of Christ and his resurrection on the third day presupposed an empty tomb. [...] Spirits do not rise from the dead in ancient Judaism, people do." - pp. 56-58
James Ware (2014) argues that the 1 Cor. 15 creed "presupposes a narrative or narratives of the kind we see in the Synoptics and John, involving an empty tomb, and encounters with a Jesus risen in flesh and bones" (p. 498). Since the creed itself is often dated to the first half of the 30s (see Ludemann 1994, p. 171; Goulder 1996, p. 48; Wedderburn 1999, p. 114; Metzger and Coogan 1993, p. 647), this (along with the evidence presented by Cook) would suggest that the belief in an empty tomb long predates all four of the canonical Gospels. Larry Hurtado takes a similar stance in his 2014 review of Ware's work; as he writes, "it’s clear that an empty tome figured in early traditions. What, otherwise, is the reference to Jesus being buried (1 Cor 15:1-7) if burial and tomb weren’t important?"
Elsewhere, Geza Vermes (2008) argues that the empty tomb story is "clearly an early tradition," and unlikely to have been a later ad-hoc invention. He notes that it lacks the characteristics that one would expect of a later, deliberately crafted story. To quote:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. [...] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - p. 140
As for the later embellishments of the story, Allison notes that we see the same thing occurring for many other events throughout the gospels, including those which no serious scholars dispute. To quote:
>"John baptized Jesus although that event, as it appears in the synoptics, has a divine voice speaking from heaven; and the Romans crucified Jesus, even if piety has embroidered the passion narratives. In like manner, Jesus was probably laid in a tomb which some women later found empty, and Christian imagination turned their report into a dramatic story that grew in the telling.” - p. 163
Now, to address the omission of the women from the 1 Cor. 15 creed, many scholars believe that the 1 Cor. 15 creed deliberately skips over the appearances to the women, which were seen as embarrassing for the early Christians. To quote Allison (2021):
>It is noticeable that 1 Cor. 15:3-8 not only enshrines “a male chain of authority” but, with reference to the five hundred, speaks of “brothers” (ἀδελφοί), not “brothers and sisters” (ἀδελφοί καὶ ἀδελφαί), although women were surely among them. In line with this, the replacement for Judas has to be, in Acts 1:21, not only a witness to the resurrection but a man (τῶν συνελθόντων ἡμῖν ἀνδρῶν). Even Matthew, who does report the appearance to Mary, rushes over it in order to get to what for him really matters, namely, 28:16-20, the appearance to the eleven males. [p. 51]
We even have examples of post-gospel writings which omit any mention of the women, skipping straight to the appearances to the male disciples:
>The androcentric bias of the tradition is evident. One recalls the comparable silence of Justin’s Dialogue. Despite his knowledge of synoptic materials, the apologist, when defending the resurrection, fails to mention Mary Magdalene or the other woman and their experiences. There is also the Gospel of Mary, wherein Peter rejects Mary’s Christophany with these words: “Did he [Jesus] really speak with a woman without our knowledge (and) not openly? Are we to turn about and all listen to her?” (17:18-21). This disparaging characterization of Mary as “a woman” has its parallel in Gos. Thom. 114 (“Simon Peter said…‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life’”). [p. 51]
As such, the fact that the 1 Cor. 15 creed makes no mention of the women does not mean that they weren't actually the first witnesses. The story "probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical" (Allison 2021, p. 202). It does not have the signs of a later invented story, while any apparent embellishments seem easily explained.
>It’s also interesting how there’s no record of a three hour eclipse around 33 AD or so when such an event would obviously be recorded everywhere for how unique and terrifying it would be.
An interesting fact is that was most likely intended as a metaphor, which would have been understood as such by the readers of that era. Darkness over the land was a common metaphor/figure of speech for when a major king or figure died. Since they saw Jesus as their king, (although most likely in a literal sense, as Jesus was likely speaking in a sense of wanting to become the literal King of Israel and not King of Heaven, later retconned to fit the narrative)^(1), it's only logical that they would use a metaphor used for other kings and major figures, as was done with Philo, Dio Cassius, Virgil, Plutarch and Josephus^(2). So yeah, it's not literal, so don't expect any historical record of it.
Popular alternatives to The Resurrection of Jesus: ...
Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
