Resurrection of Jesus Christ

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION3

THE AUTHENTICITY OF ORAL TRADITION3

APOSTLES AND HALLUCINATIONS5

NEW TESTAMENT AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS8

OVER 500 WITNESSES10

CONCLUSION11

END NOTES13

BIBLIOGRAPHY15

Resurrection of Jesus Christ

Introduction

For centuries many of the world's distinguished philosophers have assaulted Christianity as being irrational, superstitious and absurd. Many have chosen simply to ignore the central issue of the resurrection. Others have tried to explain it away through various theories. But the historical evidence just can't be discounted.

The authenticity of Oral Tradition

The Resurrection Of Jesus continues to fascinate believers and skeptics alike. The former find their latest advocate in N. T. Wright1, who makes the case for the physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth's dead and buried body. Without Jesus' bodily resurrection there can be no acknowledgement of him as the Christ, let alone as the Son of God. The skeptics are spearheaded by John Dominic Crossan, whose thesis is that it is improbable that Jesus was properly buried, let alone raised physically from the dead2. The important thing, for Crossan, is to see the resurrection as an inner experience that leads to both a personal transformation and world transformation. Glen Most sees both skeptics and believers coming together in John's figure of Thomas (Jn 11:16; 14:5; and 20:24-29). The one who refuses to believe unless he can touch comes to faith in Jesus as Lord upon seeing: "Doubting Thomas seems to have been devised by John largely in order to invoke, exaggerate, and then resolve doubt, and thereby to lay doubt to rest once and for all."3

We must look at the oldest evidence for the resurrection, I Corinthians 15:3 ff. The most important aspect of this passage is its early date. Many scholars have pointed out that the words used here (“I delivered to you what I also received”) are technical terms used to refer to the careful handing down of oral tradition. Paul apparently taught these details of Jesus' appearances to all the churches. Furthermore, he says he received word of them presumably after he became a Christian about 35 A.D., just a few years after Jesus' death. That means that this witness to Jesus' resurrection received a fixed form very soon after the actual events -- quite possibly before Paul's first post-conversion visit to Jerusalem about 36 A.D. (Gal. 1:18 f.).

We have to remember that Jesus died around 30. For 40 years, there's no written gospel of his life, until after the revolt. During that time, we have very little in the way of written records within Christianity. Our first writer in the New Testament is Paul, and his first letter is dated around 50 to 52, still a good 20 years after Jesus, himself. But it appears that in between the death of Jesus and the writing of the first gospel, Mark, that they clearly are telling stories. They're passing on the tradition of what happened to Jesus, what he stood for and what he did, orally, by telling it and retelling it....4

The fact that we're dealing in oral medium of story telling is ...