Joseph; Cultural Context

We also have Joseph of Arimathea, described as "a respected member of the council,” a “rich man” and someone who can approach Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus. Clearly, Joseph is a person of prominence, who would be known to many, and could readily confirm whether his own tomb was still occupied or not. The facts challenge thinking the resurrection accounts were merely fabricated years later. It seems clear that the tomb of Jesus was indeed empty and that hundreds of witnesses claimed to have seen him alive.

Let’s now consider the cultural context of the Resurrection.  While it is the more complex of the three columns, it is also the most compelling. 

Efforts to account for the sudden appearance of Christianity apart from the actual resurrection of Jesus runs counter to what is known about first-century history and culture. A close examination of the prevailing understanding of resurrection demonstrates that the Christian understanding was radically different from anything that predates it.  C. S. Lewis called it “chronological snobbery” to claim that as modern people we are far more skeptical of claims of a bodily resurrection, while the ancients, were gullible about matters supernatural and would have readily accepted it. That is just not the case. N. T. Wright conducted an extensive survey of the thought of the first-century Mediterranean world, both east and west, and demonstrated that the universal view of the people of that time was that a bodily resurrection was impossible. As impossible to them as it is to skeptics today.