Seven Evidences for the Resurrection

Part Two: The Argument from Resurrection; The 500; James' Conversion

This is part two in Seven Evidences for the Resurrection. See here for part one, in which I covered the Turin shroud, the disciples’ martyrdom and the women at the tomb.

4. The Argument(s) from Resurrection

There is another set of arguments, which we might call the argument from resurrection, or the disciples’ resurrection belief. Consider the following claims:

• No Jew was expecting the resurrection to take place for a single individual in the middle of history. Resurrection was not a known plot-point for the Messiah.

• The terminology for resurrection used in early Christian literature – the verb egeirō and noun anistémi – tend to imply a more physical transformation of an existing corpse rather than an amorphous ‘elevation’ (anabasis).

• Other movements dispersed after their leader’s death. Thus, the ongoing movement is readily explained by the disciples’ early resurrection belief.

• Given Jewish ideas about the physicality of resurrection, the claim that Jesus ‘rose’ from the dead implies a tangible experience of their leader.

• Without a tangible experience of him after his death, the disciples’ would have more naturally claimed that they had experienced a vision; not that he had risen.

The fact that Jesus’ early followers came to proclaim his resurrection - as opposed to some other experience – is often taken as evidence that some powerful experience lay behind the belief in Jesus’ resurrection. A resurrection-shaped experience.

What are we to make of this kind of argument? On the one hand, I think that the disciples’ resurrection belief renders it historically certain that something significant happened which prompted their faith. No first-century Jew was expecting the Messiah to be crucified and rise again. To explain this event, we need to posit a powerful experience in the fledgling Jesus movement.