The main evidence we have for the resurrection of Jesus is seen through the New Testament texts which are themselves direct evidence of a mid-1st-century, Mediterranean-wide social movement comprised of thousands of contemporaries of Jesus who believed he had been raised from the dead according to the Jewish Scriptures. This international movement was led by Jews, many of whom either knew Jesus personally, or knew people who knew him personally, during the time before he was tried, convicted, and crucified. A substantial number of these Jews, including a crowd of over 500 of them, actually saw Jesus person after his resurrection. His appearances were many, varied, and occurred over a period of forty days…and even afterward in the case of one notable witness (the well-known Saul of Tarsus, who would become even better known as the apostle Paul).
While Jews at this time had a significant presence in the Roman province of Judea, their ancestral homeland, they also were a highly-dispersed ethnic group with synagogues, large and small, situated throughout the Roman Empire. These gatherings were the usual launching point for spreading the word about Jesus’s resurrection in a new locale. This message – that their Messiah had been crucified but was raised from the dead and enthroned in heaven – was polarizing to the Jews, resulting in either the conversion of the synagogue or else the expulsion of converts from the synagogue. That distinction turned on whether the leaders of the synagogue themselves accepted or rejected the message. Gentiles began accepting the message, but they, too, were polarized. Therefore, the polarizing message of Jesus’ resurrection had its effect first on Jews, but then on the much larger population of Gentiles. Nevertheless, the leadership of this 1st-century social movement that accepted the message remained largely Jewish throughout the time that the New Testament texts were being written.
It is very important to note that the claim was not just that Jesus was raised from the dead, but that this event, as well as key aspects and turning points of his life before and after resurrection, had been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament) by Israel’s prophets hundreds of years in advance of the 1st-century events. These prophecies were promises about what God would one day do through a descendant of King David – Israel’s most prominent and admired Old Testament king. Yet many of these prophecies had been written as a riddle (the biblical term for this was “mystery”), such that no one seemed to know that the promised Messiah would be crucified and resurrected before he would be heralded as the Messiah. Otherwise, the antagonistic Jewish authorities would never have handed Jesus over to the Romans to be crucified. Rather, they would have jailed him or poisoned him or in some other way disposed of him so that no Jew would have reason to believe he was the promised Messiah of Israel.
Like a riddle, the messianic prophecies seemed contradictory, predicting glory for the Messiah but also suffering, and only made sense once the answer was revealed in the resurrection event itself. Thus, no one heard the report of Jesus’ resurrection and simply believed it as an isolated, uncontextualized, supernatural phenomenon. Rather, people heard the report of Jesus’ resurrection in the context of what Israel’s prophets had been prophesying for centuries about a coming Messiah, whose arrival 1st-century Jews deemed to be imminent before he became known to them, albeit with the uncertainty about specifics to be expected with riddle-like prophecies. This is why witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection needed to be familiar with the Jewish Scriptures. A random observer would not have been able to give the significant scriptural evidence required to get a pious Jew to take the claim seriously (see, for example, Acts 17:1-13; 18:27-28) – nor would he even have been able to understand the profound significance of the resurrection he had observed.
As made clear above, not everyone believed. Skepticism was as prominent in that age as it is in ours, though it took different forms. The primary consequence of this skepticism was indifference to the movement in the broader Gentile world until it involved enough people in politically-significant cities to elicit notice from authorities. For this reason, secular references to the movement are limited in the 1st century. It only buttresses the case for resurrection that we find references at all. The case for Jesus’ resurrection is a Jewish case, for the New Testament is as much Jewish literature as is the Old Testament. Gentile testimony of the movement that grew out of Jesus’ resurrection simply provides an exclamation point to the Jewish testimonial foundation.
If you’re going to believe that Jesus was not raised from the dead, you have to find a plausible alternate explanation for why all these 1st-century people believed he had been. Bear in mind that there were no earthly rewards for the leaders of this movement. On the contrary, they encountered trouble on all fronts for their efforts. There were no pope-mobiles, shiny garments, or plump pensions for them. In fact, by most accounts, practically all of Jesus’ apostles were martyred, and some in the most excruciatingly painful ways. In reading the New Testament texts you do not get the idea that these folks were weird or out of touch with reality. On the contrary, they seemed like regular folks – except for the extraordinary goodness that seemed to propel them to face the intense and violent persecution that the resurrection message elicited. These Jews, and the Gentiles who began to be drawn to their cause, obviously had their eye on some heavenly reward for their efforts. The question you have to ask yourself is what would motivate that sort of proclamation of that sort of message…unless it were true. I’ve never heard any other plausible explanation for it.
Within the New Testament, there are specific claims of eyewitness testimony (e.g. 1 Cor 15:1-8; Luke 1:1-4; John 20:30-31; 21:24-25; 2 Pet 1:16-19; 1 John 1:1-2), but these are merely the tip of the spear that is the broad 1st-century Jewish-Gentile social movement surrounding the resurrection of Christ. The New Testament is the collection of what remains of that movement’s internal written communications. None of the writings were addressed to skeptics; therefore, these texts do not directly deal with skeptics’ concerns. And they certainly are not written to satisfy the demands of a 21st-century media consumer. However, these texts actually provide something better. That is, they provide thoughts exchanged between God-fearing 1st-century Jews who would rather be caught dead than to bear false witness against their God. Their unshakable conviction was that the Creator of heaven and earth had raised Jesus from Nazareth from the dead according to their Scriptures. This is the evidence – their testimony. In order to be reasonable people, we should either accept their testimony, or else find evidence for an alternative explanation for their experience that is more persuasive. That plausible alternative explanation remains elusive after almost 2,000 years of failed efforts to find it; unbelievers have always found it easier to ignore the resurrection of Jesus than to disprove it.
Even skeptical scholars of antiquity will concede that the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth under the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate is among the most certain of facts – if not the most certain fact of all – we have from the entirety of ancient history, secular or religious. Given the 1st-century evidence, only a stubborn human will can prevent a person from putting Jesus’ resurrection in the same category as his crucifixion when it comes to historical reliability.
Related essays:
- Faith in God Begins with Faith in Jesus the Man (3 min)
- “One Solitary Life” as an Encapsulation of the History of Jesus (2 min)
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