Did #Jesus Really Rise From the Dead?

Mr Holdsworth discusses the very real evidence for the Resurrection, the many eyewitnesses willing to die rather than retract their story.

His Introduction:

Easter is a provocative, even outrageous thing that we celebrate. It’s easy to act casual about the claims of Easter because we’ve all heard them so many times. But imagine a world in which Christianity, the world’s most significant worldview, doesn’t exist. A world in which religiosity was usually a projection of ourselves into the universe through mythology and archetypes. If you’re going to invent a religious system, it might look something like any of the pagan cults that already existed, with a pantheon of powerful beings and the heroic stories that amaze us. It would probably reflect our many values and assumptions about the world. Our gods or our objects of devotion would have impressive and heroic qualities. They would exemplify strength, honor, fertility, power, wisdom, etc. What they wouldn’t likely be is a working-class citizen from among a conquered people from a desert region who gets himself stripped naked and nailed to timber beams for upsetting the local religious sensibilities. Look at something like a crucifix as if you’ve never seen it before and imagine a group of people holding this up as the triumphant symbol of their faith for the first time. You’d think they were crazy and frankly, it is a bit crazy. But that’s not the end of the story. The story goes on to say that this same individual, Jesus of Nazareth came back from the dead three days later. Now imagine you encounter someone who makes such a claim. That some guy who made some headlines who we all saw executed in a manner that was unrivaled in competence among ruling empires – that this same person died and rose again and was now randomly appearing at dinner parties. What if they said they saw this same person alive and back from the dead. You’d probably call into question their sanity. And that should be any sane person’s first response to a claim like that. If someone makes an impossible claim, we should all respond by trying to rationalize what they’re saying. In this case, our first explanation is probably that this witness is suffering from some delusion. But what if they don’t seem crazy. What if every other indication suggests that they are mentally competent? Well, then you’d have to assume they were lying. Because we know that people don’t come back from the dead. That’s impossible. But what if the same authorities threaten this witness who claims that he has seen our dead man alive with the same fate? What if he still persists with his story? And what if they aren’t empty threats and they go ahead and actually torture him to death as well and all the while he persists in his claim? Well, why would he continue to lie at that point? That doesn’t make much sense. So perhaps he was just delusional. But what if he wasn’t the only one. What if there were dozens, hundreds of people even, that claim to have seen the same thing and what if they all behave the same way when faced with threat of torture and death? Lunacy isn’t contagious and so it’s not reasonable to conclude that they are all suffering from some simultaneous delusion. They could all be lying and swept up in some hysteria, but you’d think a thorough beating or execution or two would sober them up. But it doesn’t. They just keep persevere through it all with their story in tact. People are fond of saying there isn’t any evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. What they mean is that there isn’t any scientific evidence. Well, what would scientific or forensic evidence of an event from 2000 years look like? That’s a pretty convenient question considering science didn’t exist back then. It’s a little like saying, “Photos or it didn’t happen.” As anyone familiar with our courts of law knows, there are more kinds of evidence than circumstantial or forensic. Eyewitness testimony, a kind of direct evidence, is arguably the most important. But yes, if you’re scrutinizing a case with certain claims, you might be able to cast doubt on one eye witness testimony based on their competence, their integrity, or their reliability. But if you have dozens of eye witnesses who all corroborate the same story, there isn’t a legitimate court anywhere that would dismiss that amount of evidence. That’s what you have in the historic case of the death and resurrection of Jesus. His many followers emerged from hiding and began proclaiming this story and they were all willing to die gruesome deaths rather than tell it any other way and that’s what happened to most of them.