A few weeks ago my parents were in Athens, Greece. My father shared with me that he climbed up to the Acropolis and was standing there looking at the Parthenon and the other ruins. His guide told him to look down at this little jut of rock and then revealed that that small rocky formation was Mars Hill.

Mars Hill is most well known to us today because it was on that site that the Apostle Paul was laughed at by the Athenians. Why was he laughed at? He was laughed at because of a sermon he preached. He was not laughed at for the whole sermon but just for the conclusion of it. At the end of his sermon, Paul said something that made many in the audience laugh and mock him.

My father tells me that he mentioned this fact to the tour guide and that he, my father, began to quote some of Pauls’ sermon on Mars Hill to the gentleman. To his surprise, the tour guide said he was well aware of it and recited some of the sermon himself. As my dad climbed down to Mars Hill he said he could not help but think of Paul and his sermon and the reaction to it so many years ago.

What was it that Paul had said that was so funny? In truth, he did not say anything funny, but what he said was considered funny by the Athenians.

The sermon is recorded in Acts 17. I will share with you the beginning and the end of it. First, the beginning.

²² So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. ²³ For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

In this famous introduction, Paul connected to the Athenians by noting how very religious they were. He then announced that he was going to reveal to them the true nature of God, the God that they had unknowingly created an altar to and inscribed with the words, “To the unknown God.” So then Paul began to tell them about this God, how He is the creator and Lord of all. It is a well done sermon, and one worthy of serious consideration. In fact, Paul seemed to have carried their attention all the way up until the end. Let us see what he said that was so amazing to the people of Athens.

³⁰ The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, ³¹ because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” ³² Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” ³³ So Paul went out from their midst. ³⁴ But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

Paul mentioned the resurrection of Jesus, the fact that Jesus had risen from the dead. His doing so was electric and immediately controversial. “Some mocked” and “others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’”

Why was this so scandalous, this mention of the resurrection? It was scandalous because, to the Greeks, resurrection was simply something that did not happen and was not ever going to happen. Dead men did not rise nor where they ever going to. And Paul certainly knew this fact. He knew that he would be mocked and ridiculed. So why did he say it? Why did Paul mention the resurrection of Jesus when He knew that doing so would invite the disdain of a large part of his audience?

He did so because he believed that the resurrection was true, that it had actually happened, and that it was the key to understanding the good news about Jesus.

We must have the same confidence as Paul. Why? Because the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the very heartbeat of the Church. It is the great divine act of confirmation, or proof that Jesus is who He said He is. The Church must decide today whether or not it is willing to be laughed at for the resurrection of Jesus, whether or not we really believe this is true. I would like to argue that it is true, and propose that Jesus actually rising from the dead is the best explanation for what happened two thousand years ago and for what continues to happen to this very day.

First, consider this description of the first Easter morning that we find in Matthew 28. Let us allow the text to speak of the grand truth of the resurrection once again.

¹ Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. ² And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³ His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. ⁴ And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. ⁵ But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. ⁷ Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” ⁸ So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹ And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”

Let us now consider whether or not there are reasons to believe that this actually happened.

Jesus rising from the dead is the best explanation for a large number of first century Jews proclaiming and being willing to die for resurrection beliefs that were unheard of within first century Judaism.

Our apologetic for the historicity of the resurrection will begin with the fact that Jesus rising from the dead is the best explanation for a large number of first century Jews proclaiming and being willing to die for resurrection beliefs that were unheard of within first century Judaism. In other words, the first believers were mainly Jews, and what they said about the resurrection of Jesus was something that no Jewish person of the first century would have said or would have imagined about the Messiah. Were they making up the idea that Jesus was the Messiah, they would have spoken in terms that would have resonated with the Jewish conception of resurrection and the Jewish conception of Messiah. In fact, what they argued was something unheard of, something no Jew, much less large numbers of Jews, would have conceived of unless what they were saying had actually happened.

What is more, first century Greeks, as we have already seen in the reaction of the Greek crowd to Paul on Mars Hill, would have had no conception of what the early Christians were saying about resurrection, and would have found the idea laughable, yet many of them came to believe and proclaim this resurrection as well.

In their book, Raised? Doubting the Resurrection, Jonathan Dodson and Brad Watson summarize this point nicely.

Resurrection wasn’t a category for the Greeks nor was it desirable…For Jews, it was unthinkable that resurrection could occur in the middle of history, apart from worldwide renewal. Even more unthinkable was the idea that an individual would be resurrected and not all humanity at once. So for the Jews and Greeks of Paul’s day, the resurrection was implausible.

They then quote N.T. Wright as saying:

The ancient world was thus divided into those who said that the resurrection couldn’t happen, though they might have wanted it to, and those who said they didn’t want it to happen, knowing that it couldn’t happen anyway.[1]

Speaking of N.T. Wright, on May 15, 2007, this famed New Testament scholar delivered a lecture entitled, “Can a Scientist Believe the Resurrection?” at Babbage Lecture Theatre in Cambridge. In that lecture, Wright highlighted the very unlikely idea of first century Jews simply making up what these early Christians were saying about the resurrection. Wright pointed to seven mutations in the first century Jewish understanding of resurrection that the early followers of Jesus introduced.

1. “The first modification is that there is virtually no spectrum of belief within early Christianity.” By this, Wright means that beliefs about the idea of resurrection were very different among Jewish groups and subgroups. There was a lot of variety, a lot of variance. The Jews were not agreed at all on whether resurrection existed or what it was or what it would look like if it happened. But these early Jewish followers of Jesus were suddenly and, outside of the resurrection actually happening, inexplicably saying the exact same thing about what had happened to Jesus three days after the crucifixion. They had solidarity around a shocking set of claims. So their agreement was a mutation in first century Jewish resurrection theology.
2. “In second-Temple Judaism, resurrection is important but not that important. Lots of lengthy works never mention the question, let alone this answer. It is still difficult to be sure what the Dead Sea Scrolls thought on the topic. But in early Christianity resurrection has moved from the circumference to the centre…Take away the stories of Jesus’ birth, and all you lose is four chapters of the gospels. Take away the resurrection and you lose the entire New Testament, and most of the second century fathers as well.”
3. “In Judaism it is usually left vague as to what sort of a body the resurrected will possess; some see it as a resuscitated but basically identical body, while others think of it as a shining star. But from the start the early Christians believed that the resurrection body, though it would certainly be a body in the sense of a physical object, would be a transformed body, a body whose material, created from the old material, would have new properties.”
4. “The fourth surprising mutation within the early Christian resurrection belief is that ‘the resurrection’, as an event, has split into two. No first-century Jew, prior to Easter, expected ‘the resurrection’ to be anything other than a large-scale event happening to all God’s people, or perhaps to the entire human race, at the very end. There were, of course, other Jewish movements which held some kind of inaugurated eschatology. But we never find outside Christianity what becomes a central feature within it: the belief that the resurrection itself has happened to one person in the middle of history, anticipating and guaranteeing the final resurrection of his people at the end of history.”
5. “Because the early Christians believed that ‘resurrection’ had begun with Jesus and would be completed in the great final resurrection on the last day, they believed also that God had called them to work with him, in the power of the Spirit, to implement the achievement of Jesus and thereby to anticipate the final resurrection, in personal and political life, in mission and holiness.” This, Wright tells us, is an idea that is foreign to Judaism.
6. “The sixth mutation within the Jewish belief is the new metaphorical use of ‘resurrection’…Basically, in the Old Testament ‘resurrection’ functions once, famously, as a metaphor for return from exile (Ezekiel 37). In the New Testament that has disappeared, and a new metaphorical use has emerged, with ‘resurrection’ used in relation to baptism and holiness (Romans 6, Colossians 2—3), though without, importantly, affecting the concrete referent of a future resurrection itself (Romans 8).”
7. “The seventh and final mutation from within the Jewish resurrection belief was its association with Messiahship. Nobody in Judaism had expected the Messiah to die, and therefore naturally nobody had imagined the Messiah rising from the dead. This leads us to the remarkable modification not just of resurrection belief but of Messianic belief itself. Where messianic speculations…the Messiah was supposed to fight God’s victorious battle against the wicked pagans; to rebuild or cleanse the Temple; and to bring God’s justice to the world. Jesus, it appeared, had done none of these things. No Jew with any idea of how the language of Messiahship worked at the time could have possibly imagined, after his crucifixion, that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Lord’s anointed. But from very early on, as witnessed by what may be pre-Pauline fragments of early creedal belief such as Romans 1.3f., the Christians affirmed that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, precisely because of his resurrection.”[2]

The early Christian pronouncement of the resurrection of Jesus, which, in its earliest stages, was primarily Jewish, did not seem to be taking existing Jewish ideas of (a) resurrection and (b) Messiah and applying them to Jesus. Had they done so their preaching and witnessing would have looked very different than it did. They were, instead, proclaiming something that had not been heard before, and proclaiming it with a uniformity and a fervency that is hard to describe if the events they were heralding did not actually happen.

Jesus rising from the dead is the best explanation for Paul’s audacious acknowledgement of a very large number of people who would all attest to the same experience with the resurrected Christ and who were still living at the time he wrote.

We also find the first century Jew, Paul, doing something that would be inexplicable if the resurrection had not actually happened. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul argued that a very large number of people had seen Jesus alive after His death and burial, and Paul did so by naming some of these people then identifying other groups as well.

¹ Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, ² and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. ³ For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. ⁶ Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. ⁸ Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. ⁹ For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. ¹¹ Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. ¹² Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

One may hear Paul’s exasperation in that final rhetorical question: “How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” Their skepticism was outlandish to Paul in the face of so many living witnesses.

Consider with me how unbelievably foolish and reckless and dangerous Paul’s words in the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15 are if, in fact, he was part of a conspiracy or was propagating some false teaching! He was literally challenging the critics of the resurrection to go and talk to any of the hundreds of people who actually saw the resurrected Jesus alive. If Paul was not sure that they would all say the exact same thing and all firmly believed what they were saying, why on earth would he risk having this many people interviewed?

But perhaps all of these people to whom Jesus appeared were in on the scam together. Perhaps they were intentionally deceiving others. Or perhaps they really believed that Jesus was alive again but were deceiving themselves. Perhaps in their grief they experienced a mass hallucination because they wanted so badly to believe that Jesus was still alive. After all, many of the followers of Jesus had a strong psychological desire for Jesus to still be alive (though, it should be pointed out, many who came to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead had no psychological reason for wanting to do so at all!).

Warner Wallace is a cold case detective who wrote a little book on the resurrection in which he applied the techniques of cold case detectives (i.e., abductive reasoning) to the case of Jesus’ death and resurrection. He makes a very interesting statement concerning this idea of mass self-delusion.

As a detective, I frequently encounter witnesses who are related in some way to the victim in my case. These witnesses are often profoundly impacted by their grief following the murder. As a result, some allow their sorrow to impact what they remember about the victim. They may, for example, suppress all the negative characteristics of the victim’s personality and amplify all the victim’s virtues. Let’s face it, we all have a tendency to think the best of people once they have died. But these imaginings are typically limited to the nature of the victim’s character and not the elaborate and detailed events that involved the victim in the past. Those closest to the victim may be mistaken about his or her character, but I’ve never encountered loved ones who have collectively imagined an identical set of fictional events involving the victim. It’s one thing to remember someone with fondness; it’s another to imagine an elaborate and detailed history that didn’t even occur.

Based on these experiences as a detective, there are other reasonable concerns when considering the explanation that the disciples hallucinated or imagined the resurrection:

1. While individuals have hallucinations, there are no examples of large groups of people having the exact same hallucination.

2. While a short, momentary group hallucination may seem reasonable, long, sustained, and detailed hallucinations are unsupported historically and intuitively unreasonable.

3. The risen Christ was reportedly seen on more than one occasion and by a number of different groups (and subsets of groups). These diverse sightings would have to be additional group hallucinations of one nature or another.

4. Not all the disciples were inclined favorably toward such a hallucination. The disciples included people like Thomas, who was skeptical and did not expect Jesus to come back to life.

5. If the resurrection were simply a hallucination, what became of Jesus’s corpse? The absence of the body is unexplainable under this scenario.[3]

Wallace is qualified to speak of what the grieving often do in the face of incomprehensible loss. His rejection of the idea of mass hallucination is noteworthy and solid and reasonable.

Furthermore, one does not get the feeling when reading Paul’s list of witnesses in 1 Corinthians 15 that we are dealing with mass psychosis. Rather, one gets the feeling that these hundreds of people really did see and experience what they claimed to have seen and experienced and that they were more than willing to speak of it and suffer for it.

Jesus rising from the dead is the best explanation for aspects of the story of the resurrection that are in the gospels that should not be present if the story was made up and for aspects of the story of the resurrection that are not in the gospels that should be present if the story was made up.

There are things in the gospel accounts of the resurrection that we would not expect to be there if the story was invented, but that are there. We have already mentioned one of these things: the idea of a resurrected Messiah, in time, before the end of all things. That was not an idea that the Jews had of the Messiah and it is hard to imagine why this particular description of the resurrection was articulated if this particular description is not what actually happened.

There is, surprisingly, a gender argument as well. If the story of the resurrection was a fiction concocted by well-meaning but mistaken or deluded followers of Jesus, it is inexplicable that (a) Jesus would first appear to women, (b) that Jesus would tell women to go inform His hiding male followers that He was alive, and (c) that these women would have to reveal to the skeptical male followers that they were mistaken and that Jesus had, in fact arisen.

Why should this not have been present if the story was made up? Because the words of Jewish women in the first century were considered so worthless that they were not even able to testify in court. This is actually reflected in Luke’s account of the resurrection in Luke 24.

¹⁰ Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, ¹¹ but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. ¹² But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.

Imagine that you are wanting to start a movement in a first century Jewish patriarchal society. Why on earth would you surround the single most important belief in that movement with the words of those you know would be rejected outright by the vast majority of the people you were trying to convince? Why would you make the women of Easter morning the first proclaimers of the gospel and not the men? Why would the men who are writing these things allow themselves to be depicted as having to be convinced by women concerning this most important belief?

That should not be in this story if the story is not real…but there it is! Christ appeared to the women and He sent the women to inform the men that He was alive!

Jesus rising from the dead is the best explanation for aspects of the story of the resurrection that are in the gospels that should not be present if the story was made up.

Also, Jesus rising from the dead is the best explanation for aspects of the story of the resurrection that are not in the gospels that should be present if the story was made up. Here I am speaking of the absence of the kind of dramatic embellishments we would expect to find in the story if the story of the resurrection were made up. William Lane Craig illustrates this point well by looking at later embellished accounts of the resurrection found in spurious apocryphal writings and comparing them with the resurrection account found in Mark.

You don’t have in the Markan account the sort of theological and apologetical motifs that would characterize a later legendary account. It is lacking any sort of theological or apologetical reflection. The best way to appreciate this is to simply read the Markan account in contrast to the accounts of the resurrection found in the later apocryphal gospels. These were forgeries from the second century and later. For example, in the so-called Gospel of Peter, which is a forgery from the second half of the second century after Christ, the tomb is surrounded by a Roman guard – and it is explicitly identified as Roman! No doubt here now, this is a Roman guard according to the Gospel of Peter. Moreover, the guard is not set on Saturday; it is set on Friday – that ensures that no one could have had any hanky-panky going on Friday night before the tomb was guarded on Saturday as Matthew records. That apologetical gap has been closed now by the Gospel of Peter. The guard is set immediately, and it is a Roman guard. Moreover, the tomb is surrounded by all of the chief priests and the Pharisees, who are watching the tomb, and there is a huge crowd from the surrounding countryside who have all come to watch to tomb. So you have all the official witnesses there, not unqualified women. You have the Jewish leadership watching the tomb.

Now what happens? In the night, a voice rings out from heaven, and the stone over the door of the tomb rolls back by itself. Then two men descend from heaven and go into the tomb. And then a moment later three men come out of the tomb. The heads of the two men reach up to the clouds, but the head of the third man, who is apparently sitting on the shoulders of the other two – he is being supported by the other two, as they bring him out – his head overpasses the clouds! Then a cross comes out of the tomb, and a voice from heaven asks, “Hast thou preached to them that sleep?” and the cross answers, “Yea.” See, these are how real legends look! They are filled with all sorts of apologetical and theological motifs that are starkly absent from the Markan account, which is just remarkable in its simplicity. It is a bare-boned account that suggests this is not the product of legend.[4]

In the gospel accounts, the ladies go to the tomb, the stone is rolled away, the angel is there, and they are informed that Jesus is no longer there, that Jesus is alive. There are no large crowds of qualified male witnesses, no floating crosses, and no Jesus emerging like Notre Dame Rudy at the end of that movie on the shoulders of men whose heads reach up to the clouds while his own head reaches above the clouds. The gospel accounts lack these kind of shocking embellishments. Rather, they read like what they are: straight forward accounts of something shocking that actually happened.

Jesus rising from the dead is the best explanation for the simultaneous and radical transformation in the lives of a large number of people who claimed to have seen the same things and who were immediately ready to die for what they claimed to have seen…both then and now.

There is another argument for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. It is, in my opinion, the most important and significant argument of all. I am speaking here of the simultaneous and radical transformation in the lives of a large number of people who claimed to have seen the same things and who were immediately ready to die for what they claimed to have seen…both then and now.

In other words, the existence of the Church is the greatest apologetic for the resurrection of Jesus. The fact that these men and women two thousand years ago were suddenly willing to suffer and die for the claim that Jesus is alive and the fact that their lives were changed forever by having encountered the risen Christ…this is significant. Does this prove the resurrection in the way that we can prove that 2+2=4? No, but it is a stunning piece of evidence among the many other pieces of evidence, and the historicity of the resurrection is the only satisfactory response. We will allow our cold case detective, J. Warner Wallace, to speak once more.

In my years working robberies, I had the opportunity to investigate (and break) a number of conspiracy efforts, and I learned about the nature of successful conspiracies. I am hesitant to embrace any theory that requires the conspiratorial effort of a large number of people over a significant period of time when they personally gain little or nothing by their effort. This theory requires us to believe that the apostles were transformed and emboldened not by the miraculous appearance of the resurrected Jesus but by elaborate lies created without any benefit to those who were perpetuating the hoax.[5]

I am sorry, but such a notion defies belief. This early band of followers were not delusional and they did not have a suicidal death wish. Quite simply, they had actually encountered something that instantly and radically changed everything they thought they knew about reality.

And the truth of the matter is that this phenomenon continues to this very day. For two thousand years people have been encountering the risen Christ in ways that defy explanation and with the result that their lives are forever changed.

If you are here today and are a follower of Christ you could stand up and say that you too have had an encounter with the resurrected Jesus that changed everything!

I can say the same! The power of Christ overwhelmed me when I accepted Him and it overwhelms me even now! This church is filled with evidences for the resurrection. The resurrection still rests at the heart of the gospel and in the hearts of all who come to Jesus. The words of Romans 10 still stand.

⁹ because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. ¹¹ For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

“Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.”

Believe! Believe! He is alive now and forevermore!

“You will be saved.” Believe in the crucified and risen Jesus and you will be saved!

And then this promise: “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

And the gathered church says, Amen!

 

 

 

[1] Dodson, Jonathan K. and Brad Watson. Raised? Doubting the Resurrection. (Kindle Locations 217,219). GCD Books. Kindle Edition.

[2] https://www.faraday.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/CIS/Wright/lecture.htm

[3] Wallace, J. Warner (2014-03-01). Alive: A Cold-Case Approach to the Resurrection (Kindle Locations 175-192). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.

^[4] https://www.reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/transcript/s6-19#ixzz3hKxklGzz

[5] Wallace, J. Warner, Kindle Locations 158-162.