STATION 1: THE HISTORICAL QUESTION
Religion is about truth. Religion is about understanding. Christianity poses itself as a true historical religion. Other religions in the world, such as Taoism, are not nearly so concerned about events of history. They are much more concerned about spiritual truths, which work for all people here and now. They do not look to a salvation event. They do not look to the past for a particular moment of enlightenment or God's intervention with the human race.
But Christianity does. This is one of the great dividing lines between Eastern and Western religions. The religions of the West, particularly Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam, point to specific moments within time and space where God got personally involved with the human race and did something on their behalf.
So, wherein many people may be more comfortable examining the spiritual or religious understandings we are able to derive from Christianity, we must nevertheless examine the historical question.
The simple question is, "How reliable and historical are the events portrayed in the New Testament, specifically as they pertain to Jesus' death and resurrection?"
Many books have been published on this subject, and they come from different perspectives, both pro and con. I'll give you the summary, the way I see it.
There are 5, and only 5, mathematical possibilities. This is something that I do whenever I am faced with rather perplexing questions. If I can reduce the multiplex of complexity down to simple mathematical options, it helps to clarify the world for me.
 | Possibility #1: Jesus never existed. |
| Possibility #2: He existed, but He wasn't crucified. |
| Possibility #3: He was crucified, but He did not die on the Cross. |
| Possibility #4: He died on the Cross, but He was not resurrected. |
| Possibility #5: He did die, and He was resurrected. |
I will briefly examine each of these.
Option #1, Jesus never existed, is not accepted by any reputable historian, which whom I am familiar. During the 50's and 60's, during the death of God movement, it was fashionable to say that there was not historical evidence for a guy named Jesus to have ever lived. But, that was based upon very spurious and shallow scholarship. There are references to Jesus and the Christians outside of the New Testament, especially through the Jewish historian, Josephus. And especially when you consider the notion that large fires must have some spark, then you come to understand that there is truly no valid basis for concluding that Jesus never lived.
So it is relatively easy for me to discount Option #1. Option #2 is that He existed and lived, but was not crucified, that the entire Passion narrative is fictitious. All of the Gospel records read to me like eyewitness accounts.
When you have a accident or a crime scene and the police interview the survivors, one thing that they look for is to find out whether or not the stories match perfectly. If they do, the police become very suspicious. This begins to look like collusion and conspiracy, and perhaps these witnesses are a part of the plot and are guilty of the crime itself.
Police do this because they know that no two human beings can ever observe the same event in the same way. They will always see things from their own perspectives--some will add a few details, some will leave a few out. If the police dig deeply enough, they will ultimately find contradictions, wherein something cannot simultaneously be true and not true. But the police do not let that get in the way of their investigation. They see this as being much like these two different eyes that we talked about in the introduction. They have an opportunity to resolve the mysteries.
When you look at the Gospels, what ever kind of fundamentalism you want to be a part of, whatever kind of Bibliolatry, however much you want to worship the Bible as this allegedly perfect and infallible document, you will find that the 4 portrayals of the events around Jesus' death and resurrection are different. They are contradictory in some places, and these contradictions cannot be resolved perfectly well. Why do I bring this up?
Because at it pertains to Option #2, that Jesus existed but His crucifixion was just an invention, it seems to me much more psychologically valid to state, that if the entire theme was going to be made up and fabricated, that the conspirators could have done a much better job of getting their stories straight. The fact that there are such differences reads and acts like eyewitness' accounts. One person says that Jesus says some things, while another person has Him saying others upon the Cross. The Gospels read much more like eyewitness accounts than complete fabrications.
The Jews were in occupied territory. The Romans owned them, and the Romans crucified tens upon thousands of Jews. So it's not as though the crucifixion of Jesus would have been a unique event in history. No, at the slightest bit of sedition, at the slightest appearance of rebel rousing, the Romans rather than worry about any repercussions, would simply execute the criminal.
Therefore for me, if Jesus existed, one of the few things we can know absolutely about His historicity, in terms of concurrence of documents and surrounding evidence from society itself, is that He was crucified.
Option #3, He was crucified, but He did not die. Of all of the statements, this one is the most ludicrous. If we are willing to grant that Jesus existed, and if we are willing to grant that He died upon a cross (crucified), to try and say that He did not actually die on that cross, but merely appeared to, is patently ludicrous. The Romans were professional executioners. They were professional murderers. They knew how to kill people through crucifixion. They knew the difference between someone who was totally dead, and someone who had merely fainted to appear to be dead.
There were biological tests that they could perform. The piercing of Jesus side, for example, is a biological test, and the presence of that water at that point mixed with the blood indicates that His heart had broken, physically, not emotionally speaking, and that He was indeed biologically dead.
Anyone who is going to grant that the Romans crucified Him, but failed in their mission to actually kill Him, are, in final analysis, looking at a larger miracle than believing that He was crucified, died and was resurrected. So for me, Option #3 is simply silly. It is really not worth talking about.
Option #4, Jesus died on the Cross, but was not resurrected. I think, ultimately, this is where the entire debate really centers. As I've said, discounting that Jesus ever lived or discounting that He was crucified or discounting that He died, seems to be quite silly. But, what about being resurrected from the dead?
There are three things which convincing me that Jesus was resurrected.
First, at the risk of offending certain religious sensibilities, being resurrected from the dead is really not such a big deal. There have been tens and hundreds of thousands of people on this planet over the years who have died and have come back to tell about it. The old story that "well, we would know what the other world is like, but no one's ever come back to tell us about it" is simply not true. From ancient times, the Buddhists, the Tibetans, the Chinese, the Hindus, and today's professionals in modern hospitals, using modern techniques of resuscitation state that countless people have died and have come back to life. Therefore, for me talking about a resurrection of Jesus is really not such a big deal. The question is not whether or not He was resurrected, but what importance does that resurrection have for us? That is the far more significant issue.
Secondly, as I mentioned before, the accounts in the Gospel of Jesus' resurrection simply do not match up. These accounts do not read like a collusion of conspirators, but rather like eyewitness accounts. Was there 1 angel or 2 angels at the tomb on Easter morning? Were they inside or outside of the tomb? Did Mary go alone, or was she with other women? Who got to the tomb first?
It is not possible, scientifically and rationally, to put together all of the accounts in the Gospels into creating one flowing document that accurately relates all of the events on Easter morning. All attempts to do so have cheated the documents and made them say something which they don't really say. So, we have the indications of resurrection ultimately not being such a big deal, and we have what appear to be eyewitness accounts.
Third and finally there is something which for me at least bears much more weight then all of the other arguments put together. That is the lives of the apostles after the alleged death and resurrection of Jesus. We have access to large numbers of documents which relay the life of the apostles after Jesus' death and resurrection. And we are able to fairly accurately follow Peter and John and the other disciples to their various places of death throughout history.
Remember that all of the apostles faced and died very unpleasant deaths. They all became martyrs, because they all claimed to have been eyewitnesses to this man's death and resurrection. They died as martyrs because they continued to proclaim the name, the story, and the message of a man who was executed for crimes against the state of Rome.
Some of them died much more gruesome deaths than Jesus himself. I think this is highly significant. If I know that Jesus didn't really die, or if I know that He didn't really rise from the dead and am thus fabricating stories, then I will be very leery when you approach me and threaten me with pain of death if I do not renounce my teachings.
What is more, I could hold on to those teachings and beliefs if I'm in the company of my co-conspirators. We know that human nature is able to bond us together, and we are stronger in numbers than we are separately. But, history shows us that all of the apostles went their separate ways and died completely apart from each other.
If I am alone and have no fear that you will ever discover what I said, if I know that I am lying or not sure of the information I'm relaying, what is going to inspire me to die an incredibly gruesome and painful death? This appears to me to be against all aspects of human nature. This doesn't seem to fit what I know about people.
People can die for many things and they're willing to die for what they believe in, but would they be willing to die for what they absolutely know to be a lie. I have never found that to be true. Therefore, the witness of the apostles in their separate tortures, in their separate martyrdoms, is the clearest indication to me that they had a personal living relationship with Christ after He died.
Please notice that the Bible is not 100% clear as to the nature of this resurrection. This body, which He had, is not a body the way you and I think of bodies. It could magically appear within closed doors. It could eat; it could drink; but it could also change it's appearance so that it could not be recognized. It could also float up into the Heavens.
Now, if you want to believe any of those things, the only thing you can be left with is that Jesus' resurrected body, while real, was much more of a spirit, which was capable of taking upon itself a thickening and the appearance of flesh.
Regardless of the exact nature of that body, it is quite clear that the apostles, at least thought that they had walked with Him and talked with Him after they watched Him die. In conclusion, therefore, I must state that the empirical evidence is that Jesus of Nazareth, He who became known as the Christ, did live, was crucified as a criminal against the state of Rome, did die upon that cross of crucifixion, and was resurrected from the dead.
If that is not the truth, then I will continue to look for other evidence to convince me.
However, there is a much greater point here. And, that is why I begin with this. Yes, I believe that there is evidence to support the historical nature of Christ's death and resurrection. I am perfectly willing to accept it. But, the rest of this pamphlet is not based upon the need to establish historicity. That is why this treatment has been so very short and written in minimalist sketch form. I have not, for example, quoted large numbers of Christian writers or referenced large numbers of historical manuscripts.
The death and resurrection of Jesus is at least as historically sound as the conquest of Alexander the Great, or as the notion that Homer, the author of the Iliad, ever lived, but the fundamental point is in the form of a question. So, what?
Let's imagine that somebody is able to produce a video tape of, unknown to all of us, a miracle Jesus performed just before He died. He created a video camera. The video camera had a battery pack that was fully charged, and it was loaded with NTSC compatible HI-FI VHS video tape. And, let's say that somebody, digging around in Palestine a year or two, uncovers this video tape. It is carbon dated and absolutely authenticated. This video tape shows, actually and factually, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
It shows the angel coming down, blowing the rock away, and shows Him rising from the dead. The question then becomes, so what? We have established at that point the absolute, undeniable, infallible historicity of Jesus' resurrection. Who cares? What does it matter? Why is that of any significance? If the Biblical record is correct, Tabatha was resurrected from the dead. That has not turned into its own religion. Lazarus was resurrected from the dead, and that has not turned into a religion. And, if you want to believe the Bible, after Jesus' resurrection, many people were found resurrected, walking through the streets. Yet, no one worships those people. No one finds their resurrection to be of any significance.
This is a question of history versus existentialism. History becomes obsessed with the past; existentialism wants to know how that past is applicable to the here and now. I am perfectly willing to accept the historical basis of Jesus' death and resurrection, and I have attempted to give you, as best I can, those reasons why I accept it. But, if that death and resurrection simply remains history, it does you no good.
The Bible is quite clear that simply believing Jesus died and
rose from the dead doesn't do you any good. No, we must take the
past and the lessons it. We must apply them to our lives. This is
the purpose of religion. This is the purpose of Christianity and
this is the purpose of my writing.
