Was Jesus "Christ" of Nazareth resurrected from the death?
Table of Contents
Many people believe that Jesus of Nazareth, also known as "an anointed one" (messiah in Hebrew, christos in Greek) was crucified by the Romans and resurrected in the flesh three days later. But has this really happened? In this essay, I want to have a look at the evidence. What evidence do we have, and what does it say?
1. Stories
There are many stories about the resurrection, but most of them are confined to the bible. Of particular interest are the earliest writings we have: the Pauline epistles (letters by Paul the apostle), written between roughly 48 and 62 CE, a mere 20–30 years after the crucifixion, and the gospels, written between roughly 70 and 120 CE, 40–100 years after Jesus was executed.1
It is important to note that none of the authors actually knew Jesus. Paul comes closest — he writes that he met Peter, James (the brother of Jesus) and some other of Jesus's disciples, so he had actually been to Palestine and knew people who had known Jesus. The authors of the gospels are at least one step further removed: they may have known people who knew people who had known Jesus. From their poor knowledge of the local geography and customs, we also know that they probably never visited Palestine. Hence, none of these authors were eye witnesses to the life and death of Jesus.
2. Pauline epistles
2.1. What Paul says about Jesus
The biblical canon contains 13 epistles of Paul the apostle, of which seven are thought to be genuine 2 It is interesting to see what Paul knew about Jesus, from talking to Peter, James and the others:3
- "[he] was a descendant of David" (Rom 1:3);
- "he was betrayed" (1 Cor. 11:23);4
- he instituted what we now know as the Last Supper (1 Cor. 11:23-26);5
- "the Jews […] killed the Lord Jesus" (1 Thes. 2:14-15);6
- "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:3);
- "he was buried" (1 Cor. 15:4);
- "he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:4);
- "he appeared to Cephas" (Peter), "to the Twelve",7 "to more than five hundred", "to James" (the brother of Jesus, "to all the apostles" and "he appeared to me" (Paul) (1 Cor. 15:5-8).
This is roughly all Paul knew about Jesus — surprisingly little.
2.2. What Paul does not say about Jesus
The first thing that strikes us is that Jesus did not do any miracles! No virgin birth, no healing, no feeding of the 5000, no raising Lazarus or any others from the dead. Some people argue that the fact that Paul does not mention miracles does not mean they did not happen. However, if you told me about an acquaintance of yours who can raise people from the dead, would you tell me about how she ate with her friends and refrain from mentioning the miracles? It is more likely that Paul did not know about these stories, even though he had been talking to Peter, James and the others. They probably did not know about them either. The most likely conclusion is that these stories did not yet exist some 20 years after the crucifixion. The same appears to be true for the parables — there is no mention of Jesus as a teacher. When Mark wrote the first gospel around 70 CE, these stories did exist. Apparently they came into existence between 50 and 70 CE, or they existed earlier, but were rejected by people like Peter and James, who actually knew Jesus, and Paul, who was only a single acquaintance away.
2.3. Paul on the resurrection
The second striking thing, and more important for the resurrection, is that Paul mentions the appearances of Jesus after his crucifixion only in 1 Corinthians, probably written in 53–54 CE. No other of Paul's letters mentions this. It is strange that he would find this relevant then, but not five years earlier or later. However, there is a second possibility. Since our oldest copy of this letter is from after 200 CE, there have been 150 years copying with possible interpolation, i.e. addition or other changes from copyists.
But let's say that the appearance stories are genuine Paul. The word "appeared" is vague, and an odd way of expressing an encounter with a living person. If I met a person called Claude and told you about it, I would not say that "Claude appeared to me". I would say that "I met Claude". And if I went on listing other people to which Claude also appeared, you'd probably start doubting whether Claude was a living person. Yet Paul does not mention that he met Jesus, but that "[Jesus] appeared to [him]". It sounds like this was not a normal meeting, but more like some sort of vision.
Paul also describes this vision in some more detail8 in 2 Cor 12:1-7 (albeit still very vaguely), where he explains that a vision is similar to a revelation of or from (depending in the translation) the lord. He seems to be referring to someone else than himself9, but it is not clear whether this person is Jesus or someone else. The clearest (or least unclear) description of his vision or revelation of Jesus is in Galatians 1:15-16, where he states that "God […] was pleased to reveal his Son in me". So the vision of Jesus that Paul had was a revelation inside him — it suddenly and mysteriously occurred to him that Jesus was something special. No in the flesh meeting with a living person.
Note that Paul was not aware of the story of what happened "on the road to Damascus" (Acts 9:3-9), where he saw a light and chatted with Jesus (but did not see him). His companions heard the sound, but did not see anything. The same story is told in Acts 22:6-11, but now the companions did see the light. It is of course possible that this happened twice, but then Paul would probably have known one of the stories himself. More likely, this did not happen and the story was invented between the letters of Paul and the creation of Acts, by the same author as the gospel of Luke, some time around 80–100 CE, or even early in the second century.
2.4. The empty tomb
This brings us to another omission in the Pauline epistles: the empty tomb. Paul was not aware of any such thing, and we can now understand why. If you are not trying to convince people of a meeting with a living person, resurrected in the flesh, there is no need to come up with and mention an empty tomb.
2.5. Conclusions on Paul
So what evidence about the resurrection do we get from the Pauline epistles? We saw that Paul did not write much about Jesus. He wrote of the crucifixion and the resurrection, and supports the resurrection claim with the visions or revelations he had, where it inexplicably occurred to him that Jesus was something special, presumably that he was the christ and died for our sins. Others, like Peter, James and the apostles, also had such visions. In 48–62 CE and before, Peter, James and Paul knew little more about Jesus than this. In particular, there were no miracles or parables, and they did not meet Jesus in the flesh after the resurrection. Hence there was no need for a story about an empty tomb.
But how does that tally with the stories we all know about the resurrection and Jesus? For that, we need to take a look at the gospels, which were written about 10–60 years after Paul.
3. The gospels
Most scholars agree that of the four canonical gospels, that of Mark was written first (around 70 CE), followed by Matthew and Luke (85–90 CE), who copied, extended and "improved" large portions Mark, and John (90–110 CE) who differs more from the first three.10 There are therefore 10–20 years between the Pauline epistles, and we have seen that much can happen to an oral story in such a period of time.11 So what does Mark say about the resurrection?
3.1. The gospel of Mark
The gospel of Mark originally ended with the resurrection story in Mark 16:1-8, where the women discover the empty tomb 12 but "they said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid."13 So 10–20 years after Paul, we now do have an empty tomb! And the women not telling anyone is strange — how did we come to know about it? One explanation is that this was a new story around 70 CE. Jesus's resurrection was no longer spiritual, some vision or revelation that came to people like Peter, James and Paul. Now it was a resurrection in the flesh! Jesus's dead body had come to live, he had got up and left. "But", people in Mark's time (or between Paul and Mark) would have asked, "how come we never heard of this before?" Instead of answering that this was a brand new story, Mark (or the oral tradition just before him) explains that the women who discovered the empty tomb never told anybody about it. The story of the empty tomb has only recently come to light.
3.2. Matthew and Luke
Matthew and Luke took Mark's story,14 and expanded and improved it.15 In the 10–30 years between Mark and these two gospels, it seems to have become clear that just an empty tomb is not enough to convince people that Jesus had been resurrected from the death in the flesh. The women now do tell everybody.
It looks like people had rationalised the earlier vision/revelation resurrection stories as exactly that: visions or imaginations. But if the resurrection was now in the flesh, proof was needed that Jesus was really who he said he was, and that he was no ghost. Hence, Jesus appears to many more people on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) and in Jerusalem, where Jesus urges his disciples to look at his hands and feet (evidence that he was crucified) and ate something (proof that he was not a ghost; Luke 24:36-49).
Matthew came up with a different piece of evidence to tackle a different unsatisfactory solution. An alternative explanation for the empty was the robbery of Jesus's body, for example by his disciples, in order to make it look as if Jesus was resurrected. Hence Matthew's solution is to put guards at the tomb to make this impossible (Mat. 27:62-66; 28:11-15).16
3.3. The gospel of John
The resurrection scene in John 20 is the last written and more along the lines of Matthew and Luke: Jesus is seen by more disciples (although not always recognised immediately), he shows his hands and side and even allows Touching Thomas to convince himself.
4. Non-biblical sources
Two non-christian authors that lived less than a century after Jesus mention him. This is often seen as independent attestation of the historical existence of Jesus. However, these authors were not eyewitnesses of Jesus himself or the resurrection, but they were independent eyewitnesses that the Jesus movement existed in the late first and early second century CE. Even though few people doubt this, I'll mention them here for completeness.
4.1. Josephus
Flavius Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian, who took part in the Jewish uprising and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. His book The antiquity of the Jews contains two references to Jesus, and one to John the Baptist.17 Book 18, Chapter 3, verse 3 is known as the Testimonium Flavianum:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
The bits in bold are clearly later additions by christian copyists. Jews like Josephus were still awaiting the messiah or christ that was supposed to drive the Romans our of Palestine and restore the kingdom of Israel — they would not acknowledge Jesus as that messiah. Since our earliest manuscripts of Josephus date to the 11th century CE and were written by christian monks, there was ample time for interpolation. Further evidence comes from the fact that the christian author Origen wrote that "Josephus did not accept Jesus as the Christ"; apparently that passage did not exist at that time.
Later, in Book 20:9:1, Josephus mentions "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James", which most scholars think is genuine.
Josephus also mentions John the Baptist in his Book 28:5:2. This is irrelevant for this essay, but it is interesting to see that Josephus spends more time on John than on Jesus, apparently putting more relevance to the former than the latter.
4.2. Tacitus
The Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus wrote a passage on Jesus and the christians in his Annals, Book 15:44, around 116 CE.18 As a Roman, he sees christian practice as "abominations" and "hatred against mankind". He confirms that Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate during the reign of the emperor Tiberius. He also seems to suggest that that quieted down the Jesus movement for a while, only to break out again an unspecified time later both in Judaea and Rome. Tacitus may provide the most important independent evidence of the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth.
5. Conclusion: evidence for the resurrection
So what evidence do we have and what do we not have about the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth?
5.1. Evidence from Peter, James, Paul and the gospels
We have seen that the earliest sources (Paul, around 50–60 CE) understand the resurrection as a spiritual event that can is expressed as a vision or revelation, not as a resurrection in the flesh where Jesus's body came to live again. This was Paul's understanding after talking to Peter and the other disciples, and to James, the brother of Jesus. It was probably also their understanding.
However, this meaning of the resurrection became unsatisfactory between 50 and 70 CE, when the first gospels were written, for believers who had not know Jesus personally. They desired a more miraculous resurrection in the flesh. Since the author of the gospel of Mark was aware that people around him knew only about the spiritual resurrection, he (the author was probably a man) cautiously introduced a resurrection in the flesh, explaining that this had been a secret for 40 odd years because the women who discovered this had not (initially) told anyone. As evidence for the resurrection he introduces the empty tomb.
Another 10–30 years later the empty tomb had become mainstream, and the authors of Matthew and Luke no longer required the women to be silent. Instead criticism had apparently arisen that an empty tomb was insufficient evidence, so they introduced more witnesses, the marks of the crucifixion on Jesus's hands, feet and side, and Jesus's eating a meal to prove he wasn't a ghost. John added the proof that Jesus's body could be touched.
We can conclude that the people who had known Jesus personally saw the resurrection as a spiritual event, manifesting itself through visions. It took people born one or two generations later to invent the resurrection in the flesh.
5.2. Evidence for stories
However, the elephant in the room is of course that all that we really have evidence for, is that these stories existed around the times mentioned. We have no direct evidence that any event described in these stories actually took place.21 We do not even have eyewitness reports. We have evidence that there were stories about the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and that the meaning or interpretation of that resurrection changed over the decades of the first century CE. If we compare that to the overwhelming load of evidence we have for e.g. the evolution theory22 or the theory of gravity,23 the resurrection of Jesus is a poor hypothesis.
Marc van der Sluys is a doctor of philosophy at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
Footnotes:
There are indications that the gospel writers did not know the Pauline epistles. Before Paul's letters and the gospels, there was probably mainly oral transmission. Imagine you hear the story of the life of Jesus and tell it to someone else, who tells it to a third person, and so on. Let's assume the story is told on once a week and that each story teller gets it 99.9% right — a pretty good score. Mistakes happen because we are human and humans do not have a perfect memory, may mishear, may interpret something slightly differently, etc. 99.9% is pretty accurate on such an elaborate story. After 20 years, the time between Jesus and Paul, about 35% of the story is still true. After 40 years, the time between Jesus and Mark, about 12% is true. Even written documents may change as they are copied, either by mistake, by copyists who write down what they think the author meant rather than a verbatim copy, or by deliberate fraud. The earliest New Testament fragment we have today date from a century after Jesus lived; the earliest complete book is from around 200 CE; the earliest complete New Testament is from after 300 CE. See Wikipedia for more details and references.
The others were likely written in the name of Paul to try to give them authority. See Wikipedia for details and references.
I adapted this list from Bob Seidensticker.
But Judas Iscariot is never mentioned.
There is no mention of Easter though.
This information probably did not come from Peter and the other apostles: "We Jews killed Jesus". Instead, this may be interpreted in light of the later strife between Peter and later James on the one hand and Paul on the other. The former wanted the followers of Christ to follow the Jewish laws, the latter wanted to take Christianity away from the Jews and to the Gentiles. Anyway, Jews stoned, Romans crucified.
Note that there were still 12 disciples at the time, not 11.
Paul says that "he will boast about this person, but not about himself", so these are two different people.
There are indications that the authors of the gospels did not know the content of the Pauline epistles; see for example the differences in Paul's vision/revelation/conversion between his own report and that in Acts, written by the author of the gospel of Luke.
A bit of a strange story anyway: the women go to Jesus's tomb to anoint his body, well aware that they cannot access it because of the heavy stone that seals it.
Mark 16:9-20 is not present in the oldest existent manuscripts, only in later copies. The later version is more in line with the other gospels and was probably added by an assiduous copyist, who intended to improve this gospel, probably with the best intentions. It is an example of how stories can change over the centuries and millennia, even after they have been written down. It was probably intended to replace the original, not to be added to it. The discontinuity can clearly been seen; verse 9 basically starts over where verse 1 started. And instead of the women not telling anybody, they tell everybody — the complete opposite. It makes you wonder how many parts of the bible do tell the opposite of their original content, that we no longer know about…
For example, both Matthew and Luke omit the strange passage mentioned above of the women going to the tomb knowing they would not be able to remove the stone barring its entrance.
"…to this very day", indicating that Matthew wrote long after the events.
Compare the story of Little red riding hood. We know the story has been in existance for a millennium, and it proves that the story was around, not that the girl ever existed, or that everything told in the story actually happened to her (see Wikipedia).
Each of the roughly 20,000 protein-coding genes (see Wikipedia) in each of the cells in the human body provides evidence for evolution. A human body contains about 30 trillion (30,000,000,000,000) cells, (see Wikipedia) and humans only account for about 0.01% of all biomass on Earth (see Our world in data). Hence, there are about 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (\(6 \times 10^{21}\)) pieces of evidence that the support evolution theory on planet Earth.
Gravity is a well-established scientific theory. Nevertheless, science cannot prove that things will still fall down tomorrow — a scientific theory (or fact) cannot be proven. However, from observations we find that gravity seems to have worked as expected since the Big Bang, we can estimate that the probability that gravity still works tomorrow is about 99.99999999998% (in other "words", the chance that things will not fall down tomorrow is about \(2 \times 10^{-13}\)).