The Resurrection of Jesus

by
Revanth.T
Five independently established
facts:
• Death of Jesus on the Cross
• Details of Jesus’ Burial
• Discovery of the Empty Tomb
• Direct encounters with Risen
Jesus
• Dawning of the Church
1. Death of
Jesus on the
Cross
 There is no evidence to suggest
that Jesus was drugged.
 The heavy loss of blood makes
death highly probable.
 When His side was pierced with a
spear, water and blood flowed out.
 Jesus’ legs were not broken.
 Pilate asked for assurance before
releasing the body.
6. In the article “On the Physical Death of
Jesus Christ” the Journal of the American
Medical Society concluded: “Clearly, the
weight of historical and medical evidence
indicates that Jesus was dead before the
wound to His side was inflicted and
supports the traditional view that the
spear, thrust between His right ribs,
probably perforated not only the right
lung but also the pericardium and heart
and thereby ensured His death.
Accordingly, interpretations based on the
assumption that Jesus did not die on the
cross appear to be at odds with modern
medical knowledge.” (March 21, 1986, p. 1463)
2) Details
of Jesus’
Burial
1. Jesus’ burial is attested in the very
old tradition quoted by Paul in
I Cor. 15:3–5.
 Paul quotes an old Christian received no
later than his visit to Jerusalem in A.D. 36
(Gal 1:18)
 The second line of this tradition refers to
Jesus' burial.
 It thus goes back to within the first five
years after Jesus' death.
 We can match the events of this Christian
tradition with the events described in the
gospels and in the apostles' preaching in
Acts
Matching of the events
I Cor 15:3–5 Acts13:28–31 Mk15:37–16.7

Christ died . . . Though they could charge And Jesus uttered a loud
him with nothing deserving
death, yet they asked cry and breathed his last.
Pilate to have him killed.
he was buried . . . they took him down from And he [Joseph] bought a
the tree and laid him in a linen shroud, and taking
tomb him down, wrapped him in
the linen shroud and laid
him in a tomb.
he was raised . . . But God raised him from "He has risen, he is not
the dead . . . here; see the place where
they laid him."

he appeared . . . . . . and for many days he "But go, tell his disciples
appeared to those who and Peter that he is going
came up with him from before you to Galilee;
Galilee to Jerusalem, who there you will see him."
are now his witnesses to
the people.
2. The burial is part of very old
source material used by Mark in
writing his gospel.
 Mark is working with a pre–Markan
passion narrative
 This multiplicity of independent sources is
important
 Marcus Borg explains, "if a tradition
appears in an early source and in another
independent source, then not only is it
early, but it is also unlikely to have been
made up."
3. The gospels record that Joseph of
Arimathea, a member of the Jewish
Sanhedrin gave Jesus an honorable burial.

 Christian tradition would not invent a

story of Jesus' honorable burial by his
enemies
 The members of the Sanhedrin were too
well-known
 False stories were not allowed to be
spread about one of its actual members
4. No other competing burial story
exists.

 If the burial story were a legend, then

there would be competing burial legends
 There is none
 The only burial story known is the burial
by Joseph of Arimathea.
The honorable burial of Jesus is
"one of the earliest and best –
attested facts about Jesus.”
- John A. T. Robinson
3) Discovery
of the Empty Tomb
1. The Historical Reliability of the
Story of Jesus' Burial Supports the
Empty Tomb.

 The tomb must have been empty, when

the disciples began to preach that Jesus
was risen.
 The disciples could not have believed in
Jesus' resurrection if his corpse still lay in
the tomb
 The Jewish authorities would have
exposed the whole affair simply by
pointing to Jesus' tomb
2. Paul's Testimony Implies the Fact
of the Empty Tomb.

 Paul does not explicitly mention the empty tomb

 "He was buried," followed by the expression "He
was raised" implies the empty tomb.
 As E.E. Ellis remarks, "It is very unlikely that the
earliest Palestinian Christians could conceive of
any distinction between resurrection and physical,
'grave-emptying' resurrection. To them an
anastasis (resurrection) without an empty grave
would have been about as meaningful as a square
circle."
3. Paul's expression "on the third
day" implies the Empty Tomb.

 Since no one actually saw Jesus rise from

the dead, why did the early disciples
proclaim that he had been raised "on the
third day"?
 It was on the third day that the women
discovered the tomb of Jesus empty
 "on the third day" is a time-indicator
pointing to the discovery of the empty
tomb
4. The Empty Tomb Story Is Part of
Markan Source Material and Is
Therefore Very Old.

 Mark apparently employed a source of

information that is accordingly very early.
 Pre-Markan passion source never refers to
the high priest by name.
 This is incredibly early and makes the
hypothesis of legend with regard to the
empty tomb an idle theory.
5. The Tomb Was Probably
Discovered Empty by Women.

 Women were not qualified to serve as

legal witnesses.
 Women occupied a low rung on the Jewish
social ladder.
 Consider these Jewish texts: "Sooner let
the words of the Law be burnt than
delivered to women!" and again: "Happy
is he whose children are male, but
unhappy is he whose children are female!"
6. The Disciples Could Not Have
Preached in Jerusalem Had the Tomb
Not Been Empty.

 One of the most amazing facts about the

early Christian belief in Jesus' resurrection
was that it originated in the very city
where Jesus was crucified.
 If the proclamation of Jesus' resurrection
were false, all the Jewish authorities
would have had to do was to point to the
tomb.
7. The Earliest Jewish Propaganda
Against the Christians Presupposes
the Empty Tomb.

 In Matt 28: 11-15 we have the earliest

Christian attempt to refute the Jewish
propaganda against the Christian
proclamation of the resurrection.
 The Jewish propaganda that the disciples
stole the body presupposes that the body
was missing and that the tomb was
empty.
"It is extremely difficult to object to
the empty tomb on historical grounds;
those who deny it do so on the basis
of theological or philosophical
assumptions.” - D. H. Van Daalen
"By far most exegetes hold firmly to
the reliability of the Biblical
statements concerning the empty
tomb.” - Jacob Kremer
4) Direct encounters with Risen Jesus
1. Paul's Testimony Proves the
Disciples Saw Appearances of Jesus.

 Appearance to Peter (Luke 24:34)

 Appearance to the Twelve (Luke 24:36-42
and John 20:19-20)
 Appearance to 500 brethren
 Appearance to James
 Appearance to "all the apostles“
 Appearance to Saul of Tarsus
"The more we study the tradition with
regard to the appearances, the firmer
the rock begins to appear upon which
they are based." - Norman Perrin
2. The Resurrection Appearances
Were Physical, Bodily Appearances.

 Paul, and indeed all the NT, makes a

conceptual (if not linguistic) distinction
between an appearance of Jesus and a
vision of Jesus.
 The unanimous testimony of the gospels
in this regard is quite impressive.
 The gospel accounts have been shown to
be fundamentally historically reliable
"It may be taken as historically
certain that Peter and the disciples
had experiences after Jesus’ death in
which Jesus appeared to them as the
risen Christ."- Gert Lüdemann
5) Dawning of the Church
1. Without this belief in the
resurrection, early Christianity could
not have come into being.

 The origin of Christianity hinges on the

belief of the early disciples that God had
raised Jesus from the dead.
 R.H. Fuller says, even the most skeptical
critic must posit some mysterious X to get
the movement going. But what was that
X?
2. If one denies that the resurrection itself
was that X, then one must explain the
disciples' belief in the resurrection
 Not From Christian Influences
 Not From Pagan Influences
3. The parallels are dubious.
4. There is in any case scarcely any trace at
all of such pagan cults of dying and rising
gods in first-century Palestine.
 Grass: it would be "completely
unthinkable" that the original disciples
could have come to believe in Jesus’
resurrection on the basis of pagan myths
about dying and rising seasonal gods.
3. Not From Jewish Influences

 Isaiah 26:19, Ezekiel 37, and Daniel 12:2

 The Jewish conception of the resurrection
differed in two fundamental respects
3. The resurrection always occurred after the
end of the world.
4. They had no conception of the
resurrection of an isolated individual.
Best Explanation

 Explanatory scope
 Explanatory power
 Plausibility
 Ad hoc–ness
 Accord with accepted beliefs
 Superiority to rival hypotheses
 God raised Jesus from the
dead is the best explanation
“I am the resurrection and
the life. He who believes in
me will live, even though he
dies; and whoever lives and
believes in me will never
die…” – Jesus (Jn 11:25-26)