Did Jesus Rise From the Dead? (7 page)

How is it, then, that the Jesus movement continued? The disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus reversed the catastrophe of the crucifixion. Since God had raised Jesus from the dead, Jesus was seen to be Messiah after all.

Therefore, Peter proclaims in Acts 2:23, 36: “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. . . . Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” It was on the basis of belief in his resurrection that the disciples could believe that Jesus was, indeed, the Messiah.

It’s not surprising, then, that the belief in Jesus’ resurrection was universal in the early church. The tradition that Paul cites in 1 Corinthians 15:3—7, which defines the Gospel as the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Christ, shows that this understanding of the Gospel goes all the way back to the very beginning of the church in Jerusalem.

The Belief of the Resurrection Itself

Thus, the origin of the Christian movement hinges on the belief of the earliest disciples that God had raised Jesus from the dead. But now the obvious question cannot be avoided: How do we explain the origin of
that
belief? As R. H. Fuller says, even the most skeptical critic must posit some mysterious
X
to get the movement going.
¹⁴
But the question is: What was that X?

Summary

Before moving forward, let’s review all three of our main points:

•
         
First, we saw that numerous lines of historical evidence prove that the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his women followers.

•
         
Second, we saw that several lines of historical evidence establish that on numerous occasions and in different places various individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.

•
         
And finally, third, we saw that the very origin of the Christian faith depends on the belief of the earliest disciples that God had raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.

These three great, independently established facts represent
the majority view
of New Testament critics today. The only point of serious disagreement would be on the physical nature of the resurrection appearances. But the state of current scholarship strongly supports the three facts as I have stated them. These are not merely the conclusions of conservative or evangelical scholars; these are the conclusions of mainstream, New Testament criticism. As we saw, three-quarters of scholars who have written on the subject accept the fact of the empty tomb; virtually no one today denies that the earliest disciples experienced post-mortem appearances of Jesus; and far and away, most scholars agree that the earliest disciples at least believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead. It’s the critic who would deny these facts that today finds himself on the defensive.

THE INCONSISTENCIES

We need not therefore worry about inconsistencies in the circumstantial details of the Gospel resurrection. The case for the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t depend on such details. All four Gospels attest to the key, basic facts; many more details can be supplied by adding facts that are documented in three out of four.

Minor discrepancies in the resurrection narratives don’t affect our case here; in fact, historians expect to find inconsistencies even in the most reliable sources. No historian simply throws out a source because it has inconsistencies; otherwise, we’d have to be skeptical about all secular, historical narratives that also contain such inconsistencies. The result would be a wholly unreasonable historical skepticism.

Moreover, in the case of the Gospels, the inconsistencies aren’t even within a single source; they’re between independent sources. But obviously, it doesn’t follow from an inconsistency between two independent sources that both sources are wrong; at worst, one is wrong if they can’t be harmonized.

The remaining issue, then, is how the three established facts I’ve stated are best explained.

Part IV

EXPLAINING
THE EVIDENCE

We come at length to the second step in our case: determining which explanation of the evidence is the best.

ASSESSING HYPOTHESES

Historians weigh various factors in assessing competing hypotheses. Here are some of the most important:
¹⁵

1. The best explanation has greater
explanatory scope
than other explanations. That is, it explains more of the evidence.

2. The best explanation has greater
explanatory power
than other explanations. That is, it makes the evidence more probable.

3. The best explanation is
more plausible
than other explanations. That is, it fits better with true background beliefs.

4. The best explanation is less
contrived
than other explanations. That is, it doesn’t require adopting as many new beliefs for which we have no independent evidence.

5. The best explanation is
disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs
than other explanations. That is, it doesn’t conflict with as many accepted beliefs.

6. The best explanation meets conditions 1—5 so much better than the others that there’s little chance that one of the other explanations, after further investigation, will do better in meeting these conditions.

Since proposed hypotheses may do really well in meeting some of these criteria but not so well in meeting others, figuring out which hypothesis is the best explanation may often be difficult and requires skill. But if the explanatory scope and power of a hypothesis are very great, and it does a much better job in explaining a wide variety of facts, then it’s likely to be the best explanation.