Did the resurrection actually happen?
Paul lists the people who saw Jesus alive and says most of them are still around — go and ask them. That list is not something Paul wrote himself. It is a fixed summary he was handed, which historians date to within a few years of the crucifixion. It also passes the ordinary tests historians use on any ancient claim. And the earliest opponents never said the tomb was still full. They argued about why it was empty.
Most religions could survive their founder being wrong about a detail. Christianity cannot survive this one, and Paul says so himself, very bluntly: 1 Corinthians 15:14KJVAnd if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. — if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is empty and so is your faith.
That is a remarkable thing to write into your own scripture. It hands every critic a single point where the whole thing can be broken.
The list is older than the letter it sits in
The famous passage is not Paul’s own composition, and this is easy to miss.
In 1 Corinthians 15:3KJVFor I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. he says he delivered to them what he also received. In the ancient world that was the standard way of describing the handing on of a fixed, memorised summary — the way you would pass on a formula, not the way you describe writing something new.
That matters for dating. Paul wrote this letter in the mid-50s. But the summary inside it is older than the letter, because it is what somebody gave him. The natural occasion is his visit to Peter and James in Jerusalem, a few years after the crucifixion.
So the claim was already fixed, already being recited, while the people involved were still alive.
The usual way of explaining a resurrection story is that it grew slowly over decades, as memory turned into legend. This is the difficulty with that: there are no decades to grow in.
“Most of them are still alive”
1 Corinthians 15:6KJVAfter that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. does something no legend does. It says Jesus was seen by more than five hundred people at once, and adds that most of them are still living.
That is an invitation to go and check.
A common objection is that this appearance is found nowhere else, so nobody can confirm it. But the Gospels may well record the same event. Matthew 28:10KJVThen said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me. has Jesus sending word to his brethren to go to Galilee — the same word Paul uses for the five hundred brethren. And when they gather on the mountain, Matthew 28:17KJVAnd when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. says that some doubted — which is an odd thing to say about eleven men who had already seen him, and makes much more sense if the crowd was larger.
It passes the tests historians actually use
Set aside for a moment whether you believe it, and ask how a historian weighs any ancient report. There are four things they usually look for.
Is it early? A summary that traces back to within a few years of the events, inside a letter written while the participants were alive.
Is it embarrassing? Made-up accounts flatter their authors. This one does the opposite. 1 Corinthians 15:8KJVAnd last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. has Paul calling himself someone born out of the proper time, and 1 Corinthians 15:9KJVFor I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. has him saying he is the least of the apostles and not fit to be called one, because he persecuted the church. Nobody inventing credentials writes that.
Does it cut against expectations? First-century Jews were expecting a Messiah who would defeat Rome, not one who would be executed and then rise on his own. Invented stories usually confirm what people already hope for.
Did anyone contradict it at the time? No early source disputes the list, and no alternative version of it survives. That is not what happens to a claim the people in a position to check knew was false.
What the first opponents actually argued
The earliest counter-explanation is written down in the Gospels themselves. Matthew 28:13KJVSaying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. records the story going round at the time: his disciples came by night and stole him away.
Sit with that for a moment. The first people arguing against the resurrection did not say the tomb was still occupied. They offered a reason why it was not.
Objections answered
Only Paul mentions the five hundred, so nothing confirms it.
It is a fair instinct, but it is being applied far more strictly than historians apply it to anything else. If every detail of an ancient account had to appear in two independent sources before any of it could be trusted, most of what we know about the ancient world would have to go.
And in this case there is a likely match: the appearance on a mountain in Galilee in Matthew 28, using the same word for the witnesses and noting that some of those present doubted.
Paul isn’t a reliable witness.
The charge is usually built out of verses read away from their context — Paul saying he is glad Christ is preached even by people with bad motives, or raising an imaginary objection in Romans in order to knock it down.
Read in place, neither of those endorses lying, and Paul condemns it directly elsewhere. More to the point: someone making things up does not write himself into the story as the former persecutor who is not fit to be called an apostle.
They hallucinated. Grief does that.
Grief hallucinations are real and well documented, and if this were one grieving person the explanation would be strong.
But hallucinations happen inside one person’s head. Crowds do not share them. And they do not convert a hostile persecutor who was travelling in the opposite direction for the opposite purpose.
The theory also leaves the empty tomb unexplained, so it has to be combined with a second theory to cover that. Every extra theory you need makes an explanation weaker, not stronger.
Shared ground, and where traditions differ
All Christians hold
That Jesus rose bodily on the third day is confessed by Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants in the same creeds. No historic tradition treats it as a symbol, and every one of them treats it as the event the whole faith stands or falls on.
Catholic
Celebrates it as the centre of the church’s year and the ground of its sacramental life.
Orthodox
Makes Pascha — Easter — the heart of everything, and describes salvation as Christ trampling down death by death.
Protestant
Emphasises it as the Father’s public vindication of the Son, and as the guarantee that the believer is accepted.
Related questions
Inspired by Answering Islam. The argument is theirs; the words here are ours.
Did this answer the question?