5 Ways We Know Jesus’s Resurrection Wasn’t Invented
When people who are curious about the claims of Christianity ask me where to start, my answer is always the same: the resurrection of Jesus. Every person must answer this question: was the resurrection fact or fiction?
Evaluating 2,000-year-old historical claims is notoriously difficult. Short of a time machine, we only have eyewitness testimony. On this count everyone agrees: our earliest eyewitness testimonies (some dating to only 10-15 years after Jesus’s death) all agree that Jesus rose from the dead. One of these accounts claims that over 500 people saw them and invites people to investigate it for themselves because “most of [them] are still alive” (1 Corinthians 15:4-6).
This is hardly the kind of offer we’d expect someone covering up a fictional story to make.
To evaluate our question (fact or fiction) we simply need to ask which, given the evidence, is more likely: 1) Jesus rose from the dead, people saw him, and this launched a movement; 2) The disciples invented stories about Jesus’s resurrection and then launched a movement.
The list could go on. The simple reality is that if the disciples had wanted to make up a story that they expected to be believed in order to start a movement… They did it in the worst way possible. At every turn they made bad choices. They made their first eyewitnesses people who were discredited by their patriarchal culture. They chose a hero whose shameful death made him repulsive in the honor-shame society of Rome. They chose a centerpiece (resurrection itself) which made them look like insane fools (Acts 17:32). In every instance, they could have easily made other choices, but they did not. Worst of all, they chose to die for it—despite the fact that, at the time, “Christianity” was a tiny movement that offered nothing in the way of power, prestige, influence or wealth.
Why did they die? Why did they make such insane sounding claims?
Because these events really happened. Because they weren’t making it up as they went. They were telling it as it really happened. If you want to claim that the resurrection was fiction, you have to give a credible explanation for why the disciples told the story in the way they did and why they were willing to die for it. Moreover, you have to explain why so many people—despite incredible odds—believed it. You have to explain why Jesus was the only crucified criminal to start a movement after his death.
Once such an explanation is offered, it tends to sound far more fabulous and strange than the simplest—however miraculous it is—explanation we have: Jesus didn’t stay dead. Jesus still isn’t dead. And that explanation changes everything.
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