So What About Jesus? So What about the historical Proof?

Can we be sure that Jesus came back from the dead?

The belief in the resurrection of Jesus is fundamental to Christianity because if Jesus did not rise from the dead, He was not God, but only a man. To claim that someone would rise from the dead sounds outrageous and impossible, therefore, a number of theories have been proposed to explain away Jesus’ resurrection.

The swoon theory

This view claims that Jesus did not die on the cross, but swooned or feinted, was believed to be dead by the medically primitive society he lived in and was buried, only to revive later and re-appear to his disciples.

However, this theory is inadequate for a number of reasons. First, why is there no reference in the ancient anti-Christian literature of Jesus only swooning? All the enemies of Christianity at least agreed he had died. Second, Jesus before He was even nailed on the cross, had already suffered a night without sleep during his night time trials, the emotional trauma of seeing his followers flee from Him, the terrible Roman scourging that normally killed its victims, the agonising journey to the place of the execution with the heavy cross on his back and the torture of the crucifixion itself. It seems improbable that someone could survive this, then lie in a tomb without medical treatment and then revive! Finally, according to the Gospel of John, one of the Roman soldiers, to ensure that Jesus was dead before He was removed form the cross, plunged a spear into Jesus’ side and from the wound poured blood and water. This is a sign that clotting had occurred in the major arteries of Jesus’ body, which is a clear indication that death had occurred.

The theft theory

This theory declares that in order to ensure that it had appeared that Jesus had fulfilled His own prophecy that He would come back from the dead, His disciples stole His body.

This theory is also inadequate. It would have been in the interests of the religious authorities to ensure Jesus remained in the tomb, hence the Gospels record that a detachment of Roman sentries kept watch at the tomb. The disciples would not have had access therefore to the tomb. According to Roman military law, any sentry found asleep on duty was executed. These soldiers would dare not have fallen asleep whilst on duty, and even if they had, the sound of the large rock over the tomb’s entrance being moved would surely have woken them! If the disciples did somehow procure Jesus’ body, why would they proclaim as they did later that Jesus had risen from the dead, knowing full well he was dead? Why did they later give their lives for their conviction that He was alive when they knew He was dead?

The Romans would not have moved the body. It was in their interests for Jesus to be dead and buried so that they would not have to deal with any more disputes among the Jews over Jesus.

If the religious authorities had taken Jesus’ body, why did they not produce the remains of His body as proof that the disciples’ preaching of the resurrection was untrue?

The hallucination theory

According to this theory, People hallucinated Jesus’ appearance from the dead. If this is true, then Christianity is founded on the testimony of a pathological experience of certain persons.

Of course, this theory is not true. Generally, only certain types of people are prone to hallucination and these are people who are emotionally nervous and very imaginative. The people who claimed to have seen Jesus included the following: Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ group of female followers, Peter and the other disciples and a pair of men travelling to Emmaus. Is it possible for such a diverse group to all have the character profile that would make them hallucinate? Were they all unstable?

Moreover, hallucinations are known to psychiatrists as being highly individualistic. It is not possible for all these people to have seen the same hallucination and at the same time when Jesus appeared to them in groups.

Conclusion

If there is no known adequate theory to explain away Jesus’ empty tomb, then we must conclude that Jesus did rise from the dead. The fact that His disciples were prepared to risk their lives to maintain their claim that He was alive again is surely ‘food for thought’.