The Resurrection: Is it true?
WAS THERE a resurrection of Jesus? If there was no resurrection, then there is no Christianity. As the Apostle Paul aptly declared, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is empty, and your faith is in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:14.) If the Resurrection of Jesus is unbelievable, then so is Christianity. A man rising from the dead is an extraordinary claim. We can only believe it if we have extraordinary evidence. Do we?
There are only two sources of evidence that Jesus resurrected from the dead: the Gospels and early Christian writings (including Paul’s Epistles). The Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John –– were written (the first is Mark, about 40 years after Christ died) anonymously by authors who never knew Jesus, and not written by those after whose names they were named.
Paul’s Epistles were written 10 or 15 years before the first Gospel (Mark). In one of his Epistles, 1 Corinthians 15: 1-8, he declares “that according to the scriptures, Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried and he was raised on the third day, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12”. In Galatians 1: 12,15-16, Paul said, “I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. God revealed His son in me” not ‘to me’. The Greek word for ‘revelation’ denotes a purely non-physical event, a manifestation in a spiritual sense. He never mentions his experience on the road to Damascus and being blinded by the sight of Jesus. The story of Paul’s dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus is a bit of propagandistic legend created by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles, written about 40 years after Paul’s Epistles. Some scholars believe Luke’s “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? ... It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” (‘pricks’) ( Acts 26:14) was probably plagiarized from a Greek myth, the Baccahae, written by Euripides around 405 BCE: “I would control my rage and sacrifice to him if I were you, rather than kick against the goads.” This profoundly undermines the credibility of Paul’s alleged ‘epiphany’. Paul did not know Jesus. Paul’s Jesus is not a historical figure.
FANTASTIC STORIES
The Gospels were written with a deliberate aim to turn people towards belief in Christ. Mark, the first, was written 10 to 15 years after Paul’s Epistles. We know in the Gospels there was much meddling and forgery, not to mention wild fantastic stories. The Gospel of Peter, one of the earliest Resurrection story, has a tall Jesus whose head reaches beyond the sky, men coming out of the tomb with heads touching the sky, and a speaking cross. Matthew is a tad less fantastic, earthquakes and walking dead people. Even the famous story of the adulteress saved by Jesus’ famous quip, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ (John 8 :7) is now known to be a forgery. The Gospel, according to Mark was not written as history, but as a deliberate myth embellished by the other gospels. Consider one myth. Pontius Pilate on the annual holiday, when the Jews wanted to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus in his place (Mark 15: 6-15). No Roman magistrate, least of all the infamously ruthless Pilate, would let a rebel go. The ceremony emulates the Jewish ritual of the scapegoat and atonement: Two ‘sons of the father’, Barabbas (‘Barabbas’ means ‘Son of the father’ in Aramaic) and Jesus (‘Son of the father’). One is released bearing the sins of Israel, while the other is sacrificed so his blood may atone for the sins of Israel. This is an imitation of the Yom Kippur ceremony of Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement. As an historical fact, this story is hopelessly implausible; as a myth, it makes perfect sense. For all these reasons, we can’t trust the Gospels as historical accounts.
How did belief in the Resurrection come about? During his life, Jesus was regarded as the Messiah by his disciples. They believe he would raise an army, call down the wrath of God on the enemy, etc. The Crucifixion completely disconfirmed this ideal. Jesus was not the Messiah after all. But then, they came to believe Jesus had been raised from the dead ( the Empty Tomb, Visions of Jesus after the Crucifixion) and this reconfirmed what had earlier been disconfirmed. He really is the Messiah and the Jewish apocalyptic preacher came to be considered God. Paul, our earliest‘ witness’ to the Resurrection, says nothing about the Empty Tomb. Scholars suggest that the ‘Empty Tomb’ and the appearance of Jesus after his death originated independently and were put together later in the Gospels, expanded and embellished over the years.
If the Resurrection occurred, it would have to be a miracle. A violation of the laws of nature. If an event purported to be a resurrection occurred today, it could possibly be tested by science. Even then, after 2,000 years, this incredibly unique event would be more credible if there were well-documented, independently corroborated evidence from multiple and reliable sources. Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Roman Senate in 44 BCE. The evidence for this is without question. Like Adam and Eve, Jonah and the whale or big fish, the virgin birth, the Resurrection may be a myth, a metaphor which addresses our psychological attitude to death or our need to die and be ‘reborn’ with a new orientation to life. Theologians, of course, have their own arguments for why the Resurrection is true. Paul had a vision of the resurrected Christ, described as a ‘heavenly vision’ by the author of Acts, or was it an hallucination. And the ‘empty tomb’? A resurrection is highly unlikely; more plausible would be grave robbers, wrong tomb, body removed, or Jesus’ body was not removed from the cross. The tomb being found by women, some see this as ‘evidence’ because a fictional resurrection concocted in those sexist times would not involve the testimony of women).
The Resurrection is not an historical event. It falls outside the scope of history and into the realm of faith. Even if there is indisputable evidence against it, believers would still continue to believe. We’ll let a theologian have the last word (they usually do). “If science told me that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was impossible, could not happen, I would disbelieve that, and continue to believe what the Bible teaches; because if you take away the Resurrection, there is no Christian faith.