Today is Easter Sunday, the day that we celebrate and remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ; possibly the most debated topic in the history of the world.
There are many who would deny that Jesus of Nazareth even existed, let alone died and was resurrected. The historical record - both Biblical and Non-Biblical - has proven all these claims to be false. Jesus of Nazareth did exist. He claimed to be the Christ, and to prove it he told his disciples he would die and be raised up again. Which he fulfilled by raising from the dead in the same physical body on the third day.
Putting what the Bible says aside for a second, I thought it would be interesting to see what secular, non-Biblical sources agree about concerning the death and supposedly resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Dr Gary Habermas is one of the foremost scholars on the resurrection, and after many years of research he put forward a list of 12 minimal facts related to the resurrection on which 95% of all scholars agree.
These are:
1. Jesus died by crucifixion. Some have tried to argue that Jesus did not really die by crucifixion. They argue that somehow Jesus survived being crucified and appeared to the disciples a few days later. The problem with this argument is that there is absolutely no record of anyone ever surviving being crucified. There is a single recorded incident of two men surviving a crucifixion. They suffered greatly, and the emperor felt pity and had them brought down from the cross. He provided them with the best medical treatment available, but they died a few days later from their injuries. No one has ever survived being crucified. Further, if Jesus had survived, he would’ve been so badly beaten, there is no possible way the apostles would’ve mistaken him for a resurrected Messiah. 95% of all mainstream scholars agree that Jesus died, really died, on a Roman cross.
2. He was buried. Some have argued that Jesus was never actually buried, but that some of is were led to believe he was.
3. His death caused the disciples to despair and lose hope. Essentially everyone agrees that the disciples really believed Jesus was dead. They were hiding from the authorities believing their own lives might be in danger.
4. The tomb was empty. This is the most contested of the 12 facts at about 75% agreement. Still, that’s 75% of over 2,000 sources. So again, most scholars agree that the tomb was empty when the women came to care for Jesus’ body.
5. The disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus. This is possibly the most important proof, and 95% of all biblical scholars, historians, and philosophers agree that the disciples believed the Jesus they saw was a real, physical Jesus. The disciples did not believe they had a hallucination. In fact, the objection that the disciples were having a grief induced group hallucination has been thoroughly debunked.
First, there is absolutely no record of group hallucinations where every person involved saw the same thing. The few hundred witnesses saw Jesus at different times and places. They did not all see him at the same time. Imagine the likelihood that we would all come together, pop a little LSD, and all have exactly the same vision. That just doesn’t happen.
Some want to argue that this was grief induced. However, research shows that grief induced hallucinations happen almost exclusively to the elderly who have lost a spouse, and only about 7% of those hallucinations are both audible and visual. Grief hallucinations on the scale required to fool so many witnesses do not happen. There is no classification for grief hallucinations in the DSM-IV. There is no evidence for mass grief hallucinations because they do not happen.
Lastly, the apostle Paul claimed to have seen the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul was a persecutor of the church, he was no friend of Jesus, and his seeing and hearing Jesus can not be explained as a grief hallucination.
6. The disciples were transformed from doubters to bold proclaimers. Everyone agrees that whatever happened, it radically changed the disciples. Peter’s sermon on Pentecost is a prime example of this phenomenon. Peter stands in front of some of the very people responsible for Jesus’ death, accuses them of killing the chosen Messiah/King sent by God, and challenges them to repent. A man in Peter’s position does not do this unless he is convinced he has seen the risen Jesus. Everyone agrees the disciples were convinced proclaimers.
7. The resurrection was the central message. Studying the sermons in Acts, teachings of Paul in the epistles, and early church fathers, everyone agrees that the belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus was the core teaching of those early Christians. This fact indicates that they believed in the physical and historical event, prompting them to faith in Christ.
8. They preached the message of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem. Everyone agrees that Peter and the apostles preached the resurrected Jesus in Jerusalem at Pentecost and subsequent to it. They may not affirm the miraculous aspects of the Pentecost event, but everyone agrees that Christianity was born in Jerusalem among Jewish converts. That devout Jews, who traveled from all over the Roman world, would come to Jerusalem and be converted to follow a dead Jewish rabbi is extremely unlikely unless they were certain that rabbi was no longer dead.
9. The Church was born and grew. Historical fact. It happened.
10. Orthodox Jews who believed in Christ made Sunday their primary day of worship. Devout Jews would not do this, as it was forbidden in the Law of Moses, unless they were certain that Jesus had fulfilled the law, and a new covenant was instituted by the resurrected Messiah.
11. James was converted to the faith when he saw the resurrected Jesus. It is an accepted fact that James was skeptical of Jesus. However, it is also accepted fact that he later was leader of the church in Jerusalem. The most plausible explanation is that he didn’t accept his half-brother’s claims about himself until after he witnessed the resurrected Jesus.
12. Paul was converted to the faith. Here again we have Paul, the persecutor of the early Christians. He was an important figure, a Jew among Jews, and a young man on the rise among the important people in Israel. Then quite suddenly, he chucks it all, endures beatings, jail, threats, illness, and shipwreck for the sake of preaching the message of the resurrected Jesus. This is accepted by everyone as historical fact.
So, after looking at these 12 facts that 95% of all scholars agree upon, Habermas argues that though none of these individually is proof of the resurrection, when taken as a whole, they point strongly to the high probability that Jesus did in fact come alive again by some supernatural means. It is simply more probable, in light of the accepted facts, that Jesus did rise from the dead.
(copy taken from the Blog: Simple Profundity)
Now these are just the commonly accepted facts by both believers and non-believers alike; however, there is also a wealth of other evidence for the resurrection to consider. For any that are interested in further reading, please click
here.
The bottom line is that, Jesus Christ did indeed rise from the dead. And that incredible act lends great importance, weight and truth to all the other claims he made as well; about who he is, death, God, and heaven and hell.
So what will you do with the fact that Jesus did rise from death and the grave? Will you accept it or deny it? For if you deny it, you do so not from any lack of evidence, but rather your own personal choice.
Whatever your decision, I pray you would heed the words of John 11:25-26
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
