If Not Resurrection, Then What?

I do not pretend that any of the foregoing is a definitively conclusive argument that will bring a skeptic to admit that Jesus must have been raised from the dead.  It is always open to anyone to say, “I can’t think of a better explanation, but I know there must be one, because I intend to hold to my presupposition that dead people don’t rise.”  In fact, the Gospels tell us that thinking Jesus was a vision was the first conclusion of witnesses. They had to be convinced otherwise by Jesus’ behavior.  

And for us today? Well, as hard as it may be to accept that resurrection is possible, all other explanations for why Christianity arose, spread so rapidly, and why it took the shape it did, are far less reasonable as historical explanations.  Logic resides with the Christian explanation. 

The origins of Christianity, the reason why this new movement came into being and took the unexpected form it did, and particularly the strange mutations it produced within the Jewish hope for resurrection, and the Jewish hope for a Messiah, are best explained by saying that something significant happened.  Furthermore, the accounts in the four gospels provide the most plausible explanation.  There is no historical evidence for any other event that would explain all of these remarkable outcomes.

There are various motives why people may not want, and often refuse, to believe this.  But the honest examiner should weigh the alternative accounts against the testimony of the Gospels.   And, to date, none of them have anything like the explanatory power of the simple, though utterly challenging, Christian one.   Sound reasoning (i.e. critical rationality) points to Jesus rising from the dead.

Resurrected? NOT!

There has been no shortage of hypotheses explaining why early Christians believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Most feature one of three types of explanation: 

(1) Jesus did not really die; he survived torture and crucifixion.
(2) The tomb was empty, but nothing else happened.
(3) The disciples had visions of Jesus, but without there being an empty tomb.

The first can be disposed of swiftly.  Roman soldiers knew how to kill people especially rebel kings.  And, yes, even first-century Jews knew the difference between a survivor and someone newly alive.

The second is only a little more complicated. Faced with an empty tomb, but with no other evidence, the disciples would have known the answer - someone had stolen the body. These things happened.  They were not expecting Jesus to rise again; by itself, an empty tomb would prove as little to them as it would to us.

And lastly, visions were frequent and well known —including visions of someone recently dead.  Faced with Peter knocking on the door when they thought he was about to be killed, the praying church assumed he had died and was paying them a post-mortem visit; “it must be his angel”, they said.  

But even lifelike visions would not prevent people conducting a funeral, continuing to mourn, and venerating the tomb.  They knew the difference between a vision and a resurrected Jesus.  In fact, the Gospels tell us that thinking Jesus was a vision was the first conclusion of witnesses and they had to be convinced otherwise by Jesus’ behavior.  Again, the Gospels are by and about people no less skeptical or intelligent than people today.

Resurrection? Nah! Look for Another.

Now, if the idea that Jesus had been raised from the dead only started to crop up after twenty or thirty years of Christianity, as many skeptical scholars have supposed, those who understand the evolution of human thinking  would expect to find various strands of early Christianity in which there wasn’t much place for resurrection - or, if you did find resurrection, it should traceable back to some aspect of Judaism or pagan thinking. The wide extent and unanimity of early Christian belief in resurrection clearly point to something definitive happening, at the start, which inspired an unprecedented perspective in this amazingly unique Christian movement.

Let’s turn to the Jewish understanding of the Messiah.  In the first century, there were many other messianic movements whose would-be messiahs were executed. 

Why, in not one single case, don’t we hear any mention of disappointed followers claiming their hero had been raised from the dead?  Because… they knew better.

Resurrection was not a private event.  Jewish revolutionaries whose leader had been executed by the authorities, and who managed to escape arrest themselves, had two options: give up the revolution, or find another leader. Claiming that the original leader was alive again was simply not an option; there was no rationale for it.  Nobody said that about Judas the Galilean after his revolt ended in failure in AD 6.  Nobody said it of Simon bar-Giora after his death in AD 70. Nobody said it about Shimon bar-Kochbar after his defeat and death in 135.

Where messianic movements tried to carry on after the death of their would-be Messiah, their most important task was to find another Messiah.