Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?

Pilate asking Christ, What is truth?

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.”

1 Corinthians 15:3–5

Every other page in this section argues about ideas — whether God exists, whether faith is rational, why evil is permitted. This one argues about an event. Christianity claims that a particular man, at a particular place and time, was executed, buried, and raised; and its founding documents stake everything on the claim, in writing: “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” No other religion hands its critics the sentence that would destroy it.

That makes this the natural meeting ground between believer and skeptic, because an event leaves evidence. Much of that evidence is common ground: nearly every scholar in the field, including those furthest from belief, grants the crucifixion, the disciples’ experiences of encounters with Jesus alive, and the very early date of the tradition Paul recites. The dispute is over what the evidence is allowed to prove — and whether, as Hume argued, testimony to a miracle can be admitted at all.

The left panel below gives the skeptical case at full strength, from Hume to the modern vision hypothesis. The Catholic panel answers with the creed that predates the gospels, the tomb attested even by its deniers, the appearances that resist reduction to grief, and the belief that had no precedent to grow from. A companion page in the Watchtower section takes up the further question of what was raised — a spirit, or the body.

I invite your engagement with me on these questions. You may leave comments below, but please be sure to read our policy on commenting before doing so.

Atheist/Skeptic View

The serious skeptical case does not begin by disputing the facts. Most critical scholars, including those furthest from belief, grant that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, that his followers very soon afterward had experiences they took to be encounters with him alive, and that the tradition Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15 is older than the letter that carries it. The case is that none of this adds up to a resurrection — and that, in principle, it never could.

The in-principle objection is Hume’s. “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws,” the proof against a miracle is as complete as any proof from experience can be. His conclusion has set the terms ever since: “no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish.”1 However unlikely it is that the witnesses lied or erred, it is always less unlikely than a dead man rising.

The historian’s version needs no metaphysics. History deals in probabilities: the historian asks what most likely happened, and a miracle is by definition the least likely explanation on the table. Bart Ehrman, who accepts the crucifixion, the disciples’ experiences and the early creed, has pressed this for years: the historian, restricted to natural causes, cannot conclude that a miracle occurred, however good the testimony looks. The popular slogan — extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence — makes the same point in fewer words, and a handful of ancient documents written by partisans is not extraordinary evidence.2

The sources are late, partisan, and inconsistent. The gospels were written decades after the events, in Greek, by believers, for believers. They disagree in the details a cross-examiner would press: how many women went to the tomb, how many angels they met, whether the appearances happened in Galilee or Jerusalem. Mark, the earliest, ends in its oldest manuscripts with frightened women and no appearance of the risen Jesus at all — the appearance stories in Mark’s last twelve verses are a later addition.3

The earliest witness never mentions an empty tomb. Paul, writing before any gospel, recites death, burial, raising and appearances — and describes no tomb, no women, no angels. And he places his own experience on the Damascus road in the same list as everyone else’s: “last of all… he appeared also to me.” Paul’s encounter, on any reading, was a vision of light and voice, not a meeting with a man who ate fish. If his experience belongs on the list, the natural inference runs, the whole list may be experiences of that kind.

Bereavement psychology supplies the mechanism. Grieving people see the dead; the literature on post-bereavement experiences is large, and the disciples were grieving, guilty, and desperate. A vision to Peter, spreading through a primed community, then elaborated in the telling over decades into shared meals and touched wounds — that is a process every historian has watched happen in other movements, and it requires nothing but known human nature.4 Legends grow. Sixty years separate the events from the last gospel, and the trajectory across the four runs from an empty tomb and silence in Mark to extended physical demonstrations in Luke and John — exactly the direction embellishment moves.

Some go further and doubt that Jesus existed at all. Most skeptics do not press this — the scholarly mainstream, including its most skeptical members, regards the crucifixion as secure — but the argument is heard, and its currency online is real.5

The skeptic’s conclusion is not that the disciples lied. It is that between fraud and miracle lies a third and far likelier thing: sincere error, born of grief, amplified by hope, and hardened by time into testimony. Every religion has its attested wonders; the Christian who dismisses the miracles of other faiths on ordinary critical grounds is asked only to apply the same standard once more.

Endnotes
  1. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), §X, “Of Miracles.” Both sentences are quoted exactly, spelling included, from the critical text at davidhume.org (E 10.12–13). ↩
  2. Ehrman’s argument is stated across his debates and popular works and is summarized here rather than quoted; his acceptance of the crucifixion, the disciples’ experiences, and the early date of the 1 Corinthians 15 tradition is a matter of published record. The slogan was popularized by Carl Sagan. ↩
  3. Mark 16:9–20 is absent from the earliest manuscripts; modern critical editions and most study Bibles, Catholic ones included, note the fact. The point is common ground. ↩
  4. The vision hypothesis descends from D. F. Strauss through Gerd Lüdemann, whose position — Peter’s grief-born vision as the spark, the rest as contagion — is summarized here rather than quoted. ↩
  5. The mythicist case is associated today with Richard Carrier and, more cautiously, with Robert Price. That it is a minority view is acknowledged on all sides; see the Catholic panel for the evidence, and for the skeptical scholarship against it. ↩

Christian View

The Christian answer accepts the skeptic’s framing gladly, because the resurrection is the one article of faith that presents itself as a checkable event. Paul states the stakes in the founding document itself: “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14). What follows is not a proof — history does not deal in proofs — but a case that the facts nearly everyone grants are explained by the resurrection and by nothing else yet proposed.

A Creed Older Than the Gospels

The objection from late sources breaks against the earliest one. In 1 Corinthians 15:3–6, written about AD 55, Paul recites a formula he “received” and “delivered” — the technical vocabulary of tradition. The demonstration that this is an older creed embedded in the letter goes back to Joachim Jeremias and is now common property of the discipline. It can be dated: Paul was converted about AD 33, went up to Jerusalem three years later, and spent a fortnight with Peter and James — two of the named witnesses (Gal. 1:18). As William Lane Craig puts it, “the list of witnesses goes back to within the first five years after Jesus’ death.” The proclamation is not a legend that grew over generations; it is the founding announcement, recited while the people it names could still be asked. Paul says so himself: of the five hundred who saw at once, “most… are still alive” — a remark with no point except as an invitation to check.1

The Empty Tomb

The tomb’s discoverers are women, whose testimony carried little legal weight in that culture; no inventor would have chosen witnesses who discredited the story in advance. The narrative is plain to the point of dryness, without the apologetic flourish the later apocryphal gospels supply. Behind Mark stands an older source still, which refers to the high priest without naming him — as one speaks of the man currently in office — placing it within Caiaphas’s tenure, within seven years of the crucifixion. The resurrection was proclaimed first in Jerusalem, minutes’ walk from the tomb, before audiences with every motive to refute it; the movement could not have survived a body. And the earliest Jewish polemic conceded the point: it claimed the disciples stole the body (Matt. 28:11–15) — an accusation of theft is an admission of emptiness. The first argument was never over whether the body was gone, only over how.2

Paul’s silence about the tomb is the argument from the wrong direction: his creed says Christ “was buried” and “was raised,” and to a Pharisee that sequence means the grave was vacated — a “resurrection” leaving the body in place would not have been a resurrection in his vocabulary at all. The creed’s “on the third day” most plausibly preserves the very day the women found it empty.

Appearances That Resist the Vision Theory

The appearances came to individuals and to groups, indoors and out, to grieving women and to men who had given up — and at least twice to unbelievers: James, the Lord’s brother, and Paul, the persecutor. Hallucinations are private events; they do not come to five hundred at once. They strike the bereaved and expectant, not enemies. And they leave tombs occupied: a vision, in a Jewish frame, would have meant precisely that the man was dead — exalted perhaps, but not risen. The disciples’ own first response to the women is preserved without flattery: “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (Luke 24:11). These are not portraits of men primed to see what they longed to see.3

A Belief Without Precedent

The deepest puzzle is the belief itself. N. T. Wright’s survey of the ancient world yields a double result: paganism had no category for bodily resurrection — ghosts and visions, yes; returned bodies, never — and Judaism had the category but not the timing, a resurrection of all the righteous at history’s end, never of one man in its middle. Nobody was expecting this. A crucified messiah was a refuted messiah; every comparable movement of the period either scattered or found a new messiah in the family. This one proclaimed, at once and in Jerusalem, that God had raised its founder. Beliefs that unprecedented do not condense out of grief; something produced it, and the historian is obliged to ask what.4

The Alternatives, Each in Turn

Theft founders on the transformation and deaths of the alleged conspirators, and on the fact that the charge itself concedes the empty tomb. The swoon theory asks a scourged, speared, half-dead man to present himself as the conqueror of death; Strauss buried it a century and a half ago. Hallucination fails on the groups, the enemies, and the tomb. Legend fails on the creed: five years is not enough, and the witnesses were alive to object. Each theory can be patched by borrowing from the others, but a hypothesis assembled from four failed ones inherits their failures.5

Hume’s Bar, Reconsidered

There remains the in-principle objection: grant every fact, and is an unknown natural cause not still likelier than a miracle? Two answers. First, Hume’s rule is not an argument from evidence but a rule for ignoring it: if no testimony could establish a miracle even in principle, the verdict preceded the witnesses. Uniform experience that dead men stay dead is what the Christian claim asserts too — that is what makes the event a sign — and invoking that uniformity as disproof assumes the question at issue. Second, the probability of a resurrection depends on what else is true. If there is no God, Hume wins. But whether there is a God is the question argued across this whole section — and if there is, a resurrection is not a random violation but a purposeful act, and its probability is no longer governed by the frequency of corpses reviving. Hume’s own test invites the comparison: which is more miraculous — an act of God, or a collective hallucination striking enemies and skeptics, coincident with a body’s unexplained disappearance, issuing in a belief without precedent? The skeptic may still answer “the latter.” He is not entitled to call it the neutral verdict of history.6

And Yes, He Existed

Mythicism deserves one paragraph. Tacitus records the execution under Pilate; Josephus mentions Jesus twice, once in a core that survives every critical pruning and once in passing as the brother of James. The refutation has come as vigorously from the skeptical side of the field as the believing one — Ehrman wrote a book against it. The scholars best placed to judge, whatever they think of the resurrection, do not take it seriously.7

What rose — how the thing raised relates to the thing buried — is its own question with its own opponent, and it is answered on the companion page against the Watchtower’s spirit-resurrection teaching. The two support each other: the empty tomb is evidence about what rose, and the glorified body explains why the appearances were what they were.

This is the concise case. The full essay adds Hume’s argument in his own words and at length, the dating of the pre-Markan passion source, the fate of the era’s other messianic movements, and complete documentation. It is available as a Word document at the end of this page.

Endnotes
  1. 1 Corinthians 15:3–8, RSV. Joachim Jeremias’s demonstration and the dating through Galatians 1:18 are set out in William Lane Craig, “Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Truth 1 (1985), from which the quoted sentence comes. ↩
  2. William Lane Craig, “The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus,” New Testament Studies 31 (1985), 39–67 — eight lines of evidence, summarized here — and “The Guard at the Tomb,” New Testament Studies 30 (1984), 273–281, on the polemic’s history of assertion and counter-assertion. ↩
  3. Luke 24:11, RSV. On the psychology of the witnesses and the failure of the subjective-vision hypothesis, see the essay, sections V and VII. ↩
  4. N. T. Wright, “Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins,” Gregorianum 83/4 (2002), 615–635; at full length, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003). ↩
  5. D. F. Strauss, A New Life of Jesus (1865), vol. 1, §48, on the swoon theory; summarized here. ↩
  6. Hume’s sentences are quoted in full in the skeptic’s panel, from the critical text at davidhume.org. For the book-length case that his argument fails on its own probabilistic terms, see John Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure (Oxford, 2000), cited on the miracles page, where the argument is treated in its own right. ↩
  7. Tacitus, Annals 15.44; Josephus, Antiquities 18.3.3 and 20.9.1; Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? (HarperOne, 2012). ↩

Summary

The resurrection is the one article of faith that presents itself as a checkable event, and the founding document hands its critics the terms: “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14). The dispute with the skeptic is rarely about the data, which are largely common ground. It is about what the data are allowed to mean.

The core evidence is not late. The creed Paul recites in 1 Corinthians 15:3–6 was “received,” not composed — and Paul, converted about AD 33, spent a fortnight in Jerusalem with two of its named witnesses three years later. The list of witnesses goes back to within five years of the crucifixion, and Paul’s aside that most of the five hundred “are still alive” is an invitation to go and ask them.

The empty tomb is multiply attested — including by its deniers. Its discoverers are women, whose testimony no inventor would have chosen. The proclamation began in Jerusalem, where a body would have ended it. And the earliest counter-story — the disciples stole him (Matt. 28) — concedes the emptiness it tries to explain.

The appearances resist the vision theory. Individuals and groups, women and men, friends and enemies — James the unbelieving brother, Paul the persecutor. Hallucinations are private, strike the expectant rather than the hostile, and leave tombs occupied. The disciples greeted the first report as “an idle tale” (Luke 24:11); belief was forced on them, not projected by them.

The belief itself is the deepest puzzle. Paganism had no category for bodily resurrection; Judaism expected it only for all the righteous at history’s end. A crucified messiah was a refuted messiah — comparable movements scattered or found a new figurehead. This one proclaimed, at once, that God had raised its founder. Unprecedented beliefs need causes.

Every natural alternative fails at a named joint. Theft: the conspirators’ transformation and deaths. Swoon: a half-dead man is not the conqueror of death. Hallucination: the groups, the enemies, the tomb. Legend: five years is too short, and the witnesses were alive. Patching one theory with another inherits the failures of both.

Hume’s rule begs the question. If no testimony can establish a miracle in principle, the verdict preceded the witnesses. The probability of a resurrection depends on whether God exists — the question this whole section argues — and if He does, the event is not a frequency to be extrapolated but an act to be weighed. The skeptic who still prefers a precedentless collective hallucination plus a vanished body may say so; he may not call it the neutral verdict of history.

And the man existed. Tacitus and Josephus attest him; mythicism is rejected across the field, most vigorously by its leading skeptic, who wrote the book against it.

What rose — body or spirit — is the companion question, argued against a different opponent on the Watchtower page. Here the conclusion is narrower: a reader who concludes that God raised Jesus is not believing against the evidence. He is following it.

For a more complete essay on this topic, download Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? (.docx)