Quote:"For this reason, therefore, by the miracles wrought by His Apostles, He renders the evidence of His Resurrection unequivocal, so that not only the men of those times — this is what would come of the ocular proof — but also all men thereafter, should be certain of the fact, that He was risen. Upon this ground also we argue with unbelievers. For if He did not rise again, but remains dead, how did the Apostles perform miracles in His Name? But they did not, you say, perform miracles? How then was our religion instituted [in the beginning]? For this certainly they will not controvert nor impugn what we see with our eyes: so that when they say that no miracles took place, they inflict a worse stab upon themselves. For this would be the greatest of miracles, that without any miracles, the whole world should have eagerly come to be taken in the nets of twelve poor and illiterate men!
For not by wealth of money, not by wisdom of words, not by anything else of this kind, did the fishermen prevail; so that objectors must even against their will acknowledge that there was in these men a Divine power, for no human strength could ever possibly effect such great results." ~ Patriarch St. John Chrysostom of Constantinople.
Now, Atheists/Agnostics/Deists typically object, w.r.t to the Contingency/Design/Moral arguments for God's Existence/Intelligence/Power and Goodness that, even were all these arguments or demonstrations successful in showing that some kind of God exists, they would in no way prove by themselves that Jesus Christ is God, or the Truth of the Christian Religion. That's true. What does that is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So, the question becomes, is there Good Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? Yes, we will cite first, (1) the Toledot Yeshu, which gives an extremely hostile, but informative, account of the life of Yeshua or Jesus Christ from the perspective of the Pharisees, depreciatingly called "Yeshu" to mock Him; (2) Tacitus the Roman Secular Historian, who was also a biographer of Roman Emperors, (3) Josephus the Jewish Secular Historian, the (4) Gospel Records, and certain facts from them recognized by Secular Historians even today (for e.g. Christ's Crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, which John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar called "as certain as anything historical can ever be". Pilate was governor of Judea between 26 and 36 A.D. Also well known.)
1. Here is an excerpt from the Pharisaic polemic "Toledot Yeshu": "A man of the tribe of Judah, Joseph Pandera, lived near a widow who had a daughter called Miriam [Mary] .. Miriam gave birth to Yeshua [Jesus], whose name later depreciated to Yeshu ..He gathered 310 young men and proclaimed himself the Messiah, claiming Isaiah's "a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son" [7:14] and other prophets prophesied about him. Using God's name he healed a lame man, they worshipped him as the Messiah .. The Sanhedrin decided to arrest him, and sent messengers to invite him to Jerusalem. They pretended to be his disciples to trick him ... On the day before the Passover, Yeshu decided to go to the Temple and recover the secret name. He entered Jerusalem riding on an ass, but one of his followers, Judah Iskarioto, told the sages he was in the Temple. On a day before the Passover, they tried to hang him on a tree .. and he was buried .. His followers on Sunday told the queen that he was not in his grave, that he ascended to heaven as he had prophesied. As a gardener took him from the grave, they searched it and could not find him. But the gardener confessed he had taken it to prevent his followers from stealing his body and claiming his ascension into heaven. Recovering the body, the sages tied it to a horse's tail and took it to the queen. Convinced he was a false prophet, she ridiculed his followers and commended the sages"
This testimony is as hostile to the Life and Person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth as it is possible to be, coming from His Greatest Enemies, the Pharisees, who mocked Him as a false prophet all His Life. Origen also relates that Celsus repeats many of these claims about Christ, from the unbelieving Jewish perspective. And yet, it attests to very important historical information about Him, and confirms important details in the Gospel records: (1) He was of the Tribe of Judah, (2) His Mother was the Blessed Virgin Mary, His legal father St. Joseph, (3) He declared Himself to be the Virgin Born Son prophesied in Isaiah (7:14) 700 years before His Virgin Birth. He was worshipped as the Messiah promised by God. (through all the Prophets going back to Abraham to whom it was said, through one Son of his, Who is Christ, All Nations will be blessed). (4) Judas Iscariot betrayed him to the Sanhedrin and ultimately caused his death/killed Him. (5) After He was killed and hung on a Tree around Passover, He was buried (6) His tomb was found empty, (7) His disciples began to preach that He had risen from the dead, and was now ascended into heaven.
In a Court of Law, when some basic facts are admitted by both sides, representing both the defense and the prosecution, those facts would hardly be placed in doubt. Accordingly, these basic naturalistic facts, the Empty Tomb etc admitted also by many secular historians today, can be known to be certain historical facts.
2. Next, we have Roman Historian Tacitus: "Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus [Christ], from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty [of Christianity]".
Again, extremely hostile, hardly a friend of Christ or Christians, who speaks himself with hatred against Christians, who were innocent scapegoats for Nero's Crimes, and whose only crime was professing faith in Christ and love for mankind. But, as the Lord, "If they have hated Me, they will hate you also. If they have kept My Word, they will keep yours also". Anyway, Tacitus still bears witness to Christ's Crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.
Historian Pliny the Younger also mentions some of the "crimes" of the Christians, and that they worshipped Christ as God: “They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to God, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food–but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.”
All of this is in perfect accordance with the events related in the Gospel, that Christ was crucified and died under Pontius Pilate [and Tiberius the Emperor], but His disciples and early followers believed Him Risen, and worshipped Him as God. If Christ had not risen, no one would worship Him
3. Third, we come to Jewish Historian Josephus: There are two indisputable references to Jesus Christ in Josephus, where (1) he says that Jesus was called Christ, (2) and speaks of James, the Brother of Jesus, and also John the Baptist, once more confirming the Gospel record, and a third (3) where he seems to speak about the Resurrection of Christ itself, is of course disputed by atheists and liberals. Apart from the fact that that particular portion is found in virtually every manuscript of Josephus we possess, and the Church Fathers believed it authentic, so it is undoubtedly ancient, a middle position, espoused by some scholars, is that the passage related some historical naturalistic information about Jesus Christ.
Saint Jerome wrote in De Viris Illustribus (On Illustrious Men) about Josephus: "Josephus, the son of Matthias, priest of Jerusalem, taken prisoner by Vespasian and his son Titus, was banished. Coming to Rome he presented to the emperors, father and son, seven books On the captivity of the Jews, which were deposited in the public library and, on account of his genius, was found worthy of a statue at Rome ... In the eighth book of his Antiquities he most openly acknowledges that Christ was slain by the Pharisees on account of the greatness of his miracles, that John the Baptist was truly a prophet, and that Jerusalem was destroyed because of the murder of James the Apostle. He wrote also concerning the Lord after this fashion: “In this same time was Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it be lawful to call him man. For he was a worker of wonderful miracles, and a teacher of those who freely receive the truth. He had very many adherents also, both of the Jews and of the Gentiles, and was believed to be Christ, and when through the envy of our chief men Pilate had crucified him, nevertheless those who had loved him at first continued to the end, for he appeared to them the third day alive. Many things, both these and other wonderful things are in the songs of the prophets who prophesied concerning him and the sect of Christians, so named from Him, exists to the present day."
4. Next, the Gospel record itself, which gives specific years and times. "3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— 2 during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness." (Luk 3:1-2). Again, the 15th year of Tiberius, we now call/know as 29 A.D. John the Baptist began his ministry in this year, and Jesus Christ shortly thereafter, after being baptized by him in water. Gospel also says Christ was round 30 at the time He began to preach, and that 3 passovers passed (3 years) before His Crucifixion. Some scholars indeed claim He was crucified in 30 A.D., but more likely, it was 33 A.D in light of the above 30+3 calculation. But in any case, that He was crucified under Pontius Pilate and Tiberius is dead certain. The first historical fact, therefore, is (1) that Jesus Christ was crucified and died. Scholars also know the reference in 1 Cor 15 derives from an earlier Creed that likely dates to within 5 years of Christ's Death.
And similarly, it can be shown, (2) that He was buried in a tomb, the third, (3) that His tomb was found empty, (4) the fourth, that Christ's Apostles began to preach, first in Jerusalem, and then elsewhere, that Christ had risen from the dead and appeared to them, and this was evidently a sincere conviction of theirs, for which they were martyred. The final point is that the Resurrection is the explanation of these 4 facts.
These 4 facts, mind you, are naturalistic historical facts, and acknowledged by the majority of secular historians today, for good historical reasons.
Even Anthony Flew, Atheist-turned-Deist admitted: “the evidence for the Resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity.” So even some Deists admit as much.
5. The argument from these 4 facts, which others like Dr. Craig, Lee Strobel etc have also related, and which many former Atheists have in fact given as a reason of why they first became persuaded of Christ's claims, or re-persuaded of it after they had fallen away from Christ, may be summarized like this. "Briefly, therefore, the fact of Christ's Resurrection is attested by more than 500 eyewitnesses, whose experience, simplicity, and uprightness of life rendered them incapable of inventing such a fable, who lived at a time when any attempt to deceive could have been easily discovered, who had nothing in this life to gain, but everything to lose by their testimony, whose moral courage exhibited in their apostolic life can be explained only by their intimate conviction of the objective truth of their message. Again the fact of Christ's Resurrection is attested by the eloquent silence of the Synagogue which had done everything to prevent deception, which could have easily discovered deception, if there had been any, which opposed only sleeping witnesses to the testimony of the Apostles, which did not punish the alleged carelessness of the official guard, and which could not answer the testimony of the Apostles except by threatening them "that they speak no more in this name to any man" (Acts 4:17). Finally the thousands and millions, both Jews and Gentiles, who believed the testimony of the Apostles in spite of all the disadvantages following from such a belief, in short the origin of the Church, requires for its explanation the reality of Christ's Resurrection, for the rise of the Church without the Resurrection would have been a greater miracle than the Resurrection itself." (1907 Catholic Encyclopedia, Resurrection of Jesus Christ).
St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Contra Gentiles takes up a similar argument: "The Divine Wisdom, that knows all things most fully, has deigned to reveal these her secrets to men, and in proof of them has displayed works beyond the competence of all natural powers, in the wonderful cure of diseases, in the raising of the dead, and what is more wonderful still, in such inspiration of human minds as that simple and ignorant persons, filled with the gift of the Holy Ghost, have gained in an instant the height of wisdom and eloquence. By force of the aforesaid proof, without violence of arms, without promise of pleasures, and, most wonderful thing of all, in the midst of the violence of persecutors, a countless multitude, not only of the uneducated but of the wisest men, flocked to the Christian Faith ... This so wonderful conversion of the world to the Christian Faith is so certain a sign of past miracles, that they need no further reiteration, since they appear evidently in their effects. It would be more wonderful than all other miracles, if without miraculous signs the world had been induced by simple and low-born men to believe truths so arduous, to do works so difficult, to hope for reward so high. And yet even in our times God ceases not through His Saints to work miracles for the confirmation of the Faith."
Or, as New Testament scholar N.T. Wright put it: "That is why, as a historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus Christ rose from the dead, leaving an Empty Tomb behind in Him".
How do you explain the rise of early Christianity? Just a series of naturalistic "miracles", that millions flocked to the Christian Faith even in the midst of severe persecution, taught by 12 simple disciples, without a Risen Christ?
God Bless.
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