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One of the key things to note about the era of 1st century Palestine, is that it was primarily an oral culture. This means that information was rarely written down about  things that we might today consider to be highly significant ( let alone every single minor event; a stark contrast to 21st century western society). The main way that information was passed on was through verbal communication. However, we do still have a good number of documents which help to verify information about Jesus and the origins of the early church.

The primary sources for Jesus’ life are the Gospels in the Bible.  The main two sources are Tacitus and Josephus. These two records are very important because they verify the death of Jesus at the hand of Pontius Pilate, which collaborates the Gospel records (Mark 15:1-15, Matthew 27, Luke 23, John 18:28-40).

Cornelius Tacitus (born A.D. 52-54)

A Non-Christian Roman historian, in A.D. 112, Governor of Asia, son-in-law of Julius Agricola who was Governor of Britain A.D. 80-84. He wrote in the reign of Nero, making reference to Christians in Rome, and to Jesus’ death:

‘But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumour, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also.’ (Translated quote found in: McDowell, Josh., Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1990, Scripture Press, p.82)

Flavius Josephus (born A.D. 37)

A Jewish Historian, in A.D. 66 he was the commander of the Jewish forces in Galilee. The following quote has been debated as to its entire validity. Certain sections of the text have been judged, by some, as unlikely to have been written by a Jewish scholar. For a preliminary overview of this see: Strobel, Lee The Case or Christ, Zondervan, 1998, pp.78-80. However, the important sections attesting to the life and death of Jesus are reliable. Josephus’ writings were translated into the Arabic, which does not contain those sections of the text that have been judged suspicious. The following is a quote from the Arabic translation:

‘At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and (he) was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned Him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become him disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that He had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that He was alive; accordingly, He was perhaps the Messiah concerning who the prophets have recounted wonders.’ (Translated quote found in: McDowell, Josh., Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1990, Scripture Press, p.82)

Thallus (a Samaritan-Born historian)

He wrote in A.D. 52, which is one of the earliest writers concerning the life and death of Jesus. Unfortunately we no longer have the originals of his work, but a man called Julius Africanus, who was a Christian writer of about A.D.  221, discusses his work. He cites a section of Thallus that confirms that there was a darkness that covered the land after Jesus died, which is also recorded in Luke 23:44 and Mark 15:33. He writes:

“ ‘Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun – unreasonably, as it seems to me’ (unreasonably, of course, because a solar eclipse could not take place at the time of the full moon, and it was as the season of the Paschal full moon that Christ died)’ (Translated quote found in: McDowell, Josh., Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1990, Scripture Press, p.84)

Phlegon

A first century historian, like Thallus, his work is now lost. However Julius Africanus (above) in A.D. 221 again quotes a section of his work:

“ ‘During the time of Tiberius Caesar an eclipse of the sun occurred during the full moon’ ” (Translated quote found in: McDowell, Josh., Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1990, Scripture Press, p.84)

Lucian of Samosata

Roman of the Second century: he wrote in The Passing Peregrinus:

‘ . . . the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world . . . Furthermore, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they were all brothers one of another after they have transgressed once for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws.’ (Translated quote found in: McDowell, Josh., Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1990, Scripture Press, p.82)

Suetonius (A.D. 120)

Another Non-Christian Roman historian writes in Life of Claudius:

‘As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus (another spelling of Christus), he expelled them from Rome’ (Translated quote found in: McDowell, Josh., Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1990, Scripture Press, p.83)

Plinius Secundus, Pliny the younger

Governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor (A.D. 112). The following quote comes from a letter that he wrote to Emperor Trajan. The main concern of his letter is how to treat the Christians. In the second century, during the reign of the Caesars, the populace was expected to worship Caesar as a god. This the Christians did not do. Pliny had been putting to death those Christians who would not bow down to a statue of Trajan. In the letter he writes the following:

‘They affirmed, however, that the whole of their guilt, or their error, was, that they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verse a hymn to Christ as to a god, and bound themselves to a solemn oath, not to do any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft, adultery, never to falsify their word, not to deny trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up’ (Translated quote found in: McDowell, Josh., Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1990, Scripture Press, p.83)

Further reading

There are many more sources that attest to the origins of the early church, and many instances where books are quoted, which no longer exist, but would have been accessible in the day in which they were quoted. For further research, I have suggested some books below:

• McDowell, Josh., Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1990, Scripture Press, Chapter 5.

• Strobel, Lee The Case or Christ, Zondervan, 1998, Chapter 4

• Bruce, F. F., Jesus and Christian Origins outside the New Testament, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.

• Habermans, Gary., The Historical Jesus, Joplin, Mo.: College Press, 1996

To view Ruth’s recent testimony about how she became a christian, click here

Fact 3: The birth of the Early Church

It can be very easy in our 21st century beliefs to assume that people “ in those days” believed any kind of resurrection rubbish because they believed miracles were possible , but now that we have sophisticated minds which are more critical and scientific we know better.

We are only able to hold onto these kinds of views because we are mostly uninformed about resurrection beliefs in first century Palestine.

If we look at the beliefs of Jews and Greeks in the first century we can see that neither group believed that dead men rise! It was practically unthinkable.

But what about the resurrection in Jewish scripture and greek mythology, surely that is where they got their ideas from?

Greek mythology and resurrection

In short this is not true; there were some very fundamental differences in the concepts of ‘resurrection’ in all both parties. As we have already seen from 1 Cor 15 in the previous article, Paul is preaching a bodily resurrection, not merely a spiritual one. Greek thinking at the time was dominated by Platonic and Homeric thought, and in neither of these types of texts do we find any consideration of a bodily resurrection. Tim Keller writes ‘ In Greco-Roman thinking, the soul or spirit was good and the physical and material world was weak, corrupt, and defiling…therefore salvation was conceived as liberation from the body.’

In other words, in the views of the Greeks’ if you could lose your body then your soul would be free. If this is what you were hoping to achieve, being resurrected in the body was not only implausible to the Greeks, but it was also completely undesirable.

What about the Jews?

It is probable that the Jews were unaware or not impacted by these Greek worldviews, after all they were God’s chosen people in their eyes. They were immensely proud to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and would have been unlikely to look to the Pagans for a change of belief; since they believed they were given the Old Testament scriptures by God, why then look to another culture for a sudden change of view?

So what was the Jewish worldview involving resurrection?

Jewish Resurrection thinking

N.T. Wright points out in his extensive scholarly work, The Resurrection of the Son of God, that the Jewish community did have an expectation for a form of resurrection, but one at the end of the world. This is mostly seen in a few passages in the Old Testament such as Daniel 12:2-3, which alludes to an end-time resurrection for the nation of Israel as a whole. Such sentiments are displayed in Isaiah chapters 24-27 of  which talks of God’s judgement, and the hope for resurrection at the end of the world (Isaiah 26:19). This is also seen in Ezekiel 37, arguably the most famous of all resurrection passages.

It is true also that in non-canonical Judaic writings from 400 BC ( like 2 Maccabees, Ecclesiasticus) up to the times of Jesus that similar themes were established. The main two being the restoration of Israel, and resurrection bodies being given at the end of the world.

Messiah as warrior

However, we will note here that just like the long-awaited Jewish messiah was expected to be a warrior who would overthrow with power those governing over the Israelites (rather than a man who would be crushed and crucified); there was no expectation for the Messiah himself to be resurrected, nor for any other form of resurrection in the Jewish community before the end of the world.

Conclusion

N.T. Wright summarises: ‘The immediate conclusion is clear. Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was known to be false’.

The first two factors of the empty tomb, and the post-death encounters of Jesus alone are extremely persuasive in convincing us of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but the birthing of the early church is quite simply the knock out blow. In Acts 2:41, Peter preaches the first sermon about Jesus’ resurrection  and we see 3000 promptly respond to become followers of Christ.

This incredible birthing of the early church took place in Jerusalem, the very area where these resurrection events had taken place a few short weeks earlier. Frankly, you could understand this world religion growing from a myth if this all happened a few thousand miles away, but not in a place where there were eye-witnesses. Surely it would have been quashed immediately?

In the final article of this series I will look at the implication of all these facts combined.

For the other articles looking at the resurrection of Christ please click below.

http://reason.cck.org.uk/tag/resurrection/

As we look at our 3rd article in the series on Jesus’ resurrection, we turn our attention to the first of  three key facts that we will examine.

Fact 1: The Empty Tomb

The first detail that we need to concern ourselves with is the empty tomb. I’m making the very non-controversial assumption, which is agreed among New Testament scholars today, that Jesus of Nazareth did in fact die on that cross at Golgotha.

The Burial

After Jesus had died, he was buried by Joseph of Arimathea, who was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin (the council of Israel). This is highly probable due to the fact that there would have been very little reason for the early gospel writers to have lied about this. This would have been an embarrassing truth for them; that one of the leaders of the pack who effectively arranged the murder of Jesus, then gave his own tomb for him to be buried in. New Testament scholar Raymond Brown said that it was ‘almost inexplicable’ for the early Christians to have made this up. This is significant in that it would mean that both Jews and the followers of Christ, alike, would have known where this tomb was.

We find multiple attestation of this fact in each of the gospel accounts (Mark 15:42-47, Matt 27:57-61, Luke 23:50-54, John 19:38-42) but we are not reliant on this. Actually, there is an even earlier account in 1 Cor 15:3-5, which attests to the burial, that can be dated to around 36AD (within 6 years of Jesus’ ministry) confirming the burial.

More could be made to support this issue, but I want to look at two further reasons why the empty tomb is so strongly agreed on by New Testament scholars today.

Women giving testimony?

Firstly, the inital observers of the empty tomb that Jesus had been in were women. In our culture we simply don’t understand the significance of this. In First century Jewish culture, women were not seen as equal to men and they were not even allowed to be called as witnesses in court. Even part of the daily prayers that men said were to give thanks that they were not born as a woman. Shocking!

Tim Keller writes: ‘There was no possible advantage to the church to recount that all the first witnesses were women. It could have only undermined their credibility of the testimony.’

In light of these facts, N.T. Wright comments that there must have been enormous pressure on the early Christians to change these facts, but the reality is that they didn’t! They maintained their historical integrity and gave an account of what really happened.

Jewish Belief

Secondly, one of the first things that the Jewish leaders claimed is that the disciples stole the body (Matt 28:12-15), which means that they pre-supposed that the body was missing and the tomb was empty. There was no attempt to say that the wrong tomb was checked, or it had been moved. For the non-believing Jews, there was no issue about the empty tomb. It was obvious that the body was gone, and so a new story had to be created to try and cover it up. They had no desire for the birth of a new religion whatsoever.

Summary

When we add all of these pieces of historical evidence together, it seems to verify the fact that Jesus’ grave was found empty on the Sunday after he had been crucified. This provides us with our first part of the jigsaw in looking at whether the resurrection of Jesus really happened. Join us next week when we look at the next piece of evidence, the post-mortem appearances!

In this second article, we are going to be looking at how we tackle the historical evidence which is available to us, when considering if Jesus really rose again from the dead.

Investigating History

As the events we are looking at took place around 30 AD, it is obviously a more complex process than investigating a recent event like a Coldplay gig at Wembley Stadium, or a more serious event like the Holocaust in World War 2. Today, we have access to photography and film as well as written accounts of what goes on via newspapers. This is obviously a world away from first century Palestine, where most people were illiterate and oral tradition was the main form of communicating information.

Giving the New Testament a fair hearing

Given the culture of the time, it is all the more remarkable that we have such excellent sourcing to look into the events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We are very grateful to people like Luke who was sent by a man named Theophilus to investigate the claims of Christianity (Luke 1:1-4). Luke was not a Jewish believer, so Theophilus may have trusted him not only as a medical doctor ( a man of great intelligence), but also because of his Gentile background to be impartial in his scrupulous digging for facts. This reminds us that God in his sovereignty and providence, is not against those who wish to look into these matters for themselves; after all he has given us brains to reason with.

One of the major sources that we will be looking at for information is the New Testament itself including the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Let me remind you again that we do not have the luxury of simply writing off the Bible, “because it is the Bible”. If this is your automatic response then I want to encourage you to look at these ancient documents as a historical text just like today’s New Testament scholars do. Be sceptical about your scepticism. It’s important not to put the cart before the horse, and we’ll see some of the reasons why the gospel accounts are reliable as we investigate further.

Reading the Bible as History

Although I do believe that the Bible is the word of God (and so is without error), we will be treating it in a similar way to any other ancient text like the works of Thucydides, Plato or Aristotle, for the purpose of historical analysis. Even if you think that there are passages in the New Testament that carry difficulties, other than those we will consider for this article, put these to one side for now. They are not relevant in this particular investigation. I am arguing for the resurrection of Jesus here, not for the infallibility of the bible as a whole (that is for another article). This hopefully means that we are investigating this from the same perspective, a historical agenda rather than a theological one.

My point here is that when historians look at texts, they make assumptions that not all the text is going to be accurate, but there are still facts which can be mined from the information available. It is this approach that I am arguing for, as we look at the relevant texts. We do not need to agree on everything else written in the Bible to come to the conclusion that the resurrection happened.

Historical Methodology

One of the things which is very important at the outset, is that we treat this hypothesis fairly, using typical tools of historical analysis to make an assessment on the truthfulness of the claim that Jesus rose again.

Dr. William Lane Craig shows in his book Reasonable Faith that if we use normal historiographical methods, then it is very conclusive indeed that Jesus was raised from the dead.  The Philosopher of History, C.B. McCullagh, suggests using a form of inductive reasoning called ‘Inference to the best explanation’ to do this most effectively. This method essentially means taking the initial facts that we have available to us and seeing which theory has the greatest explanatory power, explanatory scope and is the most plausible theory with the information available.

There are three key facts that we can outline when looking at the evidence based on both biblical and non-biblical accounts; the empty tomb of Jesus, the appearances of the risen Jesus and the birth of the early church. Over the coming weeks we will look at these one at a time, and then draw a conclusion.

This is a question that we, as Christians, are asked regularly and one to which I believe we should be prepared to give a good answer to. The overwhelming philosophy of our time is a post-modernist attitude to the truth which is summarised in the statement “That may be true for you.” We have abandoned real truth and as such we are inclined to view religions as equals, all attempting to express different aspects of a spiritual experience.

So what makes Christianity unique?

Christians are committed to the truth above all else, we want to know what is factual, so it is the historicity of the resurrection that I would like to emphasize first. We believe in a literal resurrection of Jesus as an event in history and there are many supporting documents which maintain that this is the case.

Firstly, we take the gospels as eye witness accounts as to what happened. These texts can be independently verified as to have been written in the first century AD. Similarly, there are contemporary documents by non-Christian scholars who attest to the existence of Jesus as a historical character.

I believe that from this we can make two points:

- Jesus did literally die and we have reliable records of his resurrection
- There is not enough time after the resurrection and before the gospels were written for a mythology to arise

Mythology takes time

It takes time for a mythology to arise and the dating of the gospels don’t allow for so much time to have passed. We know as fact that they were written when many people who had met Jesus were still alive. In fact in 1 Corinthians 15: 6, the apostle Paul, after listing the witnesses of the resurrection; points out that many are still alive, they could then refute what is being written if it were false.

Interesting mythological accounts of the resurrection did occur in the next couple of centuries and are called the Gnostic gospels (made famous by the Da Vinci code book by Dan Brown). These accounts represent the fantasised account of Jesus’ death that many claim from the biblical gospels. However, their existence mearly shows the gospels to be an earlier and far more grounded source.

The Shock of Monotheism

The historicity of the bible is not limited to the New Testament and the whole of scripture reads like nothing else written in history. When the Jews are declaring only one God it is completely unlike anything else being believed by their contemporaries at the time. I invite you to read Greek or Egyptian Mythology and compare it to the writings of the Bible. They are completely different in structure and style. Early Judaism was declaring a message unlike anything of the time; that there is one God and he is gracious and compassionate. This compares very differently to accounts of gods coming to earth and raping humans. Homer’s Iliad was written to satirise the gods as they increasingly became the object of ridicule and disbelief due to their evident immorality.

What about Osiris, Adonis etc? 

So what do we make of other accounts of resurrection? Firstly, they lack the historical verification of the resurrection accounts. We have no way of verifying the authenticity of these sources and I think you would struggle to find anyone who takes these accounts seriously. The events described in these myths are also difficult to compare to the resurrection of Christ. The differing accounts of the death of Osiris duplicated in the story of Adonis for example variously represent the God being cut into many pieces then reassembled with a significant piece missing only conclude with him in the underworld. This is not even close to Jesus who was claimed to have walked the earth again in a human body and was witnessed by many.

There are so many other accounts that are discussed which I don’t have time to deal with. I would recommend visiting: http://garyhabermas.com/articles/religious_studies/rel_stud_res_claims_in_non-christian_religions.htm

In summary, we can be sure of Jesus’ resurrection as a historical event of which the contemporary accounts read like history and lack the fantastical style of the compared myths. Myths surrounding supposed resurrections have always been around it seems, in some form. However, they just reveal an understandable hatred of death and it is not until Jesus that we have something we can trust as actual history.

There are a many good reasons to trust in the writings of the Old Testament, a few of which I will outline below:

Its claim as the word of God

The Old Testament claims itself to be the words of God many times, for example the phrase “the Lord says” and other variations appear 3808 times. Combine this with the claim within itself that the word of the prophet is equal to God’s word (“If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.” Deuteronomy 18:19). There can be no uncertainly that the writers claim to be writing the words of God.

The historicity of events

The Old Testament stands as a description of history, and as such is there to be corroborated or contradicted by any archaeological evidence. Obviously, people argue for and against its presentation of history but as far as can be seen there is plenty of evidence for its accurate description of history. Individuals and Empires described in the Old Testament did exist and can be externally verified. Most notable is probably the Cyrus Cylinder which dates from around 539 BC and is housed in the British Museum. In this, the reign of Cyrus is declared and he tells of how he rebuilt temples in foreign cities and returned their inhabitants to the land from which they had been dispossessed. Both of these events occurred to the Jews and are described in 2 Chronicles.

Manuscript evidence

Perhaps the oldest extant documents of the Old testament are from the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ (which were discovered only very recently in 1947). Significant parts of the book of Isaiah which were found on this occasion match almost word for word with the same copies that we can read now in 2009 (minus very minor grammatical errors). The oldest fragment of these scrolls we have dates from around 200 BC and there are many other fragments and documents around which debate rages. At the very least we know that the Old Testament we have is the same as Jesus’ and combining this with the witness of archaeology leads me to have confidence in its authenticity. Certainly there is no obstruction to belief.

The witness of Jesus

Perhaps the most convincing evidence of the correctness of the Old Testament comes from Jesus himself. In Luke 24:44 Jesus says: “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”

In this Jesus is referring to the complete Old Testament beginning from Moses (Genesis) and ending with the prophets (Malachi). Subsequently we can learn that Jesus considered the Old Testament as the word of God and quoted from it regularly as the word of God.

In summary, history that is known of is in accordance with the Old Testament record and the manuscript evidence leads us with no reason to be concerned. Manuscript evidence is all relative with Caesar’s Gallic War going unquestioned with the oldest copy we have being written 1000 years after its original writing. Ultimately, if Jesus claims it to be God’s word and He is God we have no external reason not to believe this.

Weren’t people from around 300-1800 AD under a great deal of pressure to conform, or face persecution by Christians?

Persecution of Christians and Christian Persecution

Throughout Christian history there have been those who have been persecuted for proclaiming the good news of Christ. This is entirely to be expected, in fact Jesus himself said it would be so (e.g. Matthew 5:11-12.) However, what is less explicable is the persecution of others by Christians. Does Christianity sanction this? Does Christianity condone this?

‘In The Name of Jesus’

European conflicts that could be termed ‘Christian’ in the time-frame you mention include both those that were purely religious purges of dissenters from the faith (heretics) and those which actually entailed other (usually political,) causes in the guise of religious conflict. The common factor in both is that these things were perpetrated in the name of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the important question to ask is ‘Did these actions accord to the teaching and example of Jesus?’ For example, suppose I am an ardent pacifist who can think of nothing worse than someone else being caused pain, no matter how justified. With this in mind, suppose that someone you did not know approached you and punched you in the face saying “I’m doing this in the name of Tim”. By such a combination of behaviour, my name would have become embroiled in something completely contrary to my ethos. Could this be the case for historic persecutions enacted ‘in the name of Jesus?’

The Teaching of the New Testament

To test whether persecution of unbelievers is in accordance with true Christianity we need to examine the Scriptures. Here are a few excerpts demonstrative of the pattern of teaching which emerges in the New Testament:

* John speaking in 1 John 3:15 says “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.” Which mitigates entirely against hate and murder as appropriate actions for a Christian.

*Indeed, Christ himself enhances the Old Testament Law against murder to include ‘hatred’ by saying in Matthew 5:21-22 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

*Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 comments on the jurisdiction of Christians in terms of judging the behaviour of others saying “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked man from among you.” Therefore, limiting Christian moral and behavioural instruction to those within the Church.

Conclusion

Therefore, at the points in history where Christ’s name has been brought into disrepute by those purporting to be His followers whilst pursuing a violent agenda, we find the actions of the persecutors to be incoherent with the faith they claim to uphold. Indeed, we see Christ’s heart on the matter in his rebuke to Peter in John 18:10-11 and his teaching on retaliation in Matthew 5:38-42. Furthermore, we are told in the prophecy of Isaiah 9:7 that Christ’s kingdom will be extended by peace and that it will be the ‘zeal of the LORD almighty’ that will achieve this. Actually, this is the fearsome and wonderful truth about Christianity: It is not spread by the sword or by coercion as is the case with some belief systems. Rather, the Bible demonstrates the extension of God’s Kingdom rule to be a supernatural endeavour in which Christians are privileged agents in Christ’s inevitable plan and purpose.