This Easter Sunday, I wanted to briefly address a question that often comes up: Did Jesus really exist, and did he really rise from the dead, or is the whole story a myth?
I will most likely discuss the proof
of Jesus' life, death and resurrection in detail in a later blog post, but I
wanted to briefly summarize proof we have that the story is true. First, we have a wealth of texts that verify
Jesus' existence. We have the four
Gospels, written by eyewitnesses and their companions, which all tell the story
of Jesus, his life and teachings, and his death and resurrection. The letters of early church fathers (such as Papias, Polycarp and a document known as the Didache), written between
95-150 CE, quoted extensively from all four of the Gospels and said that they
contained the words of Jesus. We also
have an early fragment of John's Gospel (known as Papyrus P52), dated roughly
to the first half of the second century CE.
The four Gospels were in circulation and being quoted by 100 CE, which
means that they were written within 70 years of the death and resurrection of
Jesus (which occurred circa 30 CE). In addition,
we have the letters of Paul, Peter and James, who all were martyred prior to 67
CE. All of these letters testified to
the existence of Jesus and his death and resurrection, and all were written
within 40 years of the events.
Besides the Biblical texts, we have
extra-Biblical documents that testify that a man named Jesus lived and was
executed during the governorship of Pontius Pilate (whose existence has been
confirmed by archaeological evidence; see my earlier blog on The Pilate Stone). Tacitus, a first-century Roman historian, mentioned
"Christus" being executed during the reign of Tiberius, and Emperor Nero's
persecution of Christians [1].
Suetonius, another Roman historian, mentioned the same events [2]. Josephus, a Jewish historian, mentioned
Jesus, James and John the Baptist in Antiquities
[3]. The Babylonian Talmud mentioned a
man named "Yeshu" who was accused of sorcery and apostasy, and hanged
on the eve of Passover [4]. There are
quite a few other examples, but these are among the most prominent.
As for evidence of the resurrection,
we have several clues that point to the fact that Jesus actually, bodily rose from
the dead. Witnesses saw his body laid in
the tomb, a seal was placed over the entrance and guards were present (Matthew
27:57-66). After Jesus rose from the
dead, he appeared to his disciples and many others, including 500 people at one
time (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). The empty
tomb was explained away by the religious officials, who conspired with the
guards to say that the disciples stole the body while the guards were asleep
(Matthew 28:11-15). This theory is very
faulty, however - how would the disciples have been able to break the seal and
remove the body without waking the guards?
Why would all of the disciples have suffered torture and gone to their
violent deaths proclaiming a risen Jesus if they had just stolen his dead body
and hidden it? Why would they die for a
lie? Had that been the case, at some
point the truth of their deception would have been exposed.
The empty tomb attests to the
resurrection of Jesus. To end the spread
of Christianity, all that the religious leaders and Romans would have had to do
was produce Jesus' body and present it publicly as proof that he did not rise
from the dead. They could not, however,
because the body was gone.
One of my favorite parts of
Scripture is the original ending of the gospel of Mark, just after the women
who went to the tomb found it empty and an angel told them that Jesus had
risen: "Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and
fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid"
(Mark 16:8, NIV). The gospel ends very
abruptly, with women running away from an empty tomb. It is almost as if the author was posing a
question to the reader: "The tomb is empty. Now, what do you think happened?"
References
[1] Tacitus, Annals 15.44
(written circa 116 CE)
[2] Suetonius, Life of Nero 16.2
[3] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews Books 18 and 20 (written circa 93-94 CE)
[4] Babylonian
Talmud Sanhedrin 43a
