The Resurrection Seems The Most Likely Historical Truth

When I read the New Testament, and surrounding works by 1st century writers, it seems a lot easier to believe that the resurrection actually happened than it does the contrary view that it didn't. One big reason why this is so is because the account of the resurrection occurred in the backdrop of two ruling groups, the Jews and the Romans, who would have wanted with all their will and might for it not to be true.

That is to say, the resurrection was a huge threat to their power and sovereignty. The Christian movement proclaiming Jesus is Lord would do a lot to undermine the Jewish authority, as lots of its proponents were from among their ranks. Similarly, the Romans had every reason to be concerned about rebellion as proclaiming Jesus as Lord undermined their allegiance to Caesar as the object of deification.

The easiest and most convenient way for the Jewish and Roman authorities to derail the emerging Christian faith would have been to produce the dead body of the crucified Christ, and proclaim the resurrection false to all the eyewitnesses of the time. But nothing of the kind was done. Couple that with the sheer number of Christians who underwent torture and death to secure the truth of Jesus' divinity, and the historical argument becomes even more compelling.

 

Why would so many be willing to be martyred for their faith and refuse to renounce it when doing so would have made their lives easier? We all know people who die for what they believe to be true, but I know of no one who has died for something they believe to be false. And why did they believe Jesus' resurrection to be true when there were so many opportunities and incentives to falsify it by so many self-interested people? The most likely answer, for me, is that it is true.

The other thing that's clear from reading both the Old and New Testaments is that although there is Divine choreography overseeing the proceedings, there is also the granting of quite a free hand in the writing process. The free hand afforded in the years after Jesus' resurrection and ascension would have very much been based on the oral traditions of the time, and as time passed there would have been the increased freedom for mistakes and discrepancies. The further from the event we travel in time the higher the probability of inaccuracies, both honest mistakes through memory loss, and dishonest corruptions of the texts.

But what we actually found was that as time went on the cohesive narrative became not less strong, but stronger, in fact - precisely as you'd expect to see if the incarnated Christ is the pivot around which all else in creation revolves. Naturally, distant history takes us beyond the realm of proof, but for me it does offer us grounds for reasonable faith and trust in Him.

 

Happy Easter!