Of course, Islam could still be true. If there were other good arguments to believe the Quran, such as the common Muslim arguments for the inspiration of the Quran, and if those arguments outweighed the historical evidence of Jesus’ death, then I would be justified in maintaining my faith in the Quran and in Islam. For that reason, as far as my personal beliefs were concerned, I did not falter in my Islamic faith. In my heart I believed that the Quran would be vindicated soon enough.
But, as far as my investigation on this issue was concerned, I recalled my commitment to objectivity and had to be honest with myself. Would an objective observer conclude that Jesus died by crucifixion? Of course, the atheist and agnostic scholars answered that question for us with a resounding voice: Yes, one certainly would. The reasons were overwhelming: The record of Jesus’ death appears at lightning speed, it is asserted dozens of times within a hundred years, and the chorus of reports is composed of Christian, Jewish, and Roman voices. No one had ever survived a full Roman crucifixion, and had Jesus done so, that would have been a much more appealing message for the early church to proclaim than was the stumbling block of a crucified Savior.1
Islam’s responses, the Theistic Swoon Theory and the Substitution Theory, are not plausible, both because they suggest miracles in the face of much more obvious, probable explanations and because they would require a total overhaul of the historical realities of early Christianity, as we will explore further shortly. In addition, as a historical source about Jesus’ life, there is very little reason to trust the Quran because it was composed six hundred years after Jesus and more than six hundred miles away from where he lived. Although there are accounts in the Quran that come from an earlier period, those are from late, fictitious gospels that are historically unreliable.
In conclusion, we have to agree with Gerd Lüdemann: “The fact of the death of Jesus as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable.”
PART 7
DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD?
CHAPTER 25
THE POSITIVE CASE
THE BEST EXPLANATION OF THE FACTS
Jesus’ death on the cross is not the end of the Christian message. The gospel is that Jesus then rose from the dead. Whereas every other life ended in death, Jesus’ death ended in life, and his resurrection is the basis of all Christian confidence. Death is nothing to be feared. Jesus has conquered it, and we are in him.
His resurrection has been the locus of Christian confidence from the inception of the church. In the book of Acts, Luke records the first Christian sermon, in which Peter concludes by proclaiming the resurrection: “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it” (Acts 2:32 NIV). In his next recorded sermon, Peter says, “You killed the originator of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this” (Acts 3:15).1 No fewer than eleven passages in the book of Acts record the early church proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection. This was the message that established the early church: Jesus rose from the dead.
But the importance of the resurrection is perhaps stated most clearly by Paul, who says in 1 Corinthians 15:14, “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (NIV). Christian preaching and Christian faith are useless if Jesus remains dead and was not raised. If he did not overcome death, neither will we.
Did Jesus rise from the dead? Do we have good reason to believe in Christ’s resurrection? If so, it is a solid foundation for Christian faith. If not, Christians are the most pitiful people of all.2
That was what Mike argued about a year after my father and I sat in his living room, but this time, seven hundred other people were listening. In 2004, Mike Licona debated Shabir Ally, the famous Muslim debater, on the question: “Did Jesus rise from the dead?”3
THE MINIMAL FACTS APPROACH
That night, Mike was advancing an argument pioneered by his friend Gary, called the Minimal Facts Approach. The advantages to the argument are that it is powerful, easy to understand, and so simple that it can be stated in one sentence: There are historical facts surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion that virtually all historians agree upon, and by far the best explanation of those facts is that Jesus rose from the dead.
To provide some background, Gary had spent thirty years cataloguing the positions of historical Jesus scholars, whether agnostic, atheist, Jewish, Christian, or any other worldview. He read everything published about the historical Jesus in scholarly journals and monographs written in French, English, or German. He noticed that, on some matters, well over 90 percent of scholars were unanimous.4 While considering those facts, he realized that they were best explained by Jesus’ resurrection. By far. Every other explanation either ignored or strained the historical facts surrounding Jesus’ death.
Truly, when we consider the task of the historian, it is to do exactly that: provide a narrative model that makes the best sense of the historical records. In this case, the only model that really fits the facts is that Jesus rose from the dead.
Taking the list of facts from Gary, Mike has since whittled it down to three, which we will briefly explore now:
Jesus died by crucifixion
Jesus’ followers truly believed the risen Jesus had appeared to them
People who were not followers of Jesus truly believed the risen Jesus had appeared to them
Fact 1: Jesus died by crucifixion. The previous chapter explored Jesus’ death by crucifixion in detail. More than any other matter concerning Jesus, historians remain convinced that Jesus’ death is a fact of history.
Fact 2: Jesus’ followers truly believed the risen Jesus appeared to them. Historians are also convinced that Jesus’ followers came to believe that they had seen the risen Jesus. Their reasons are manifold.
First, the proclamation appears extremely early in church history. First Corinthians 15:3–7, the “news flash” Christian creed that reported Jesus’ death within a few years of his crucifixion, also contains a formulation of the people to whom he appeared. It reports “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, then to the Twelve, then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at the same time, of whom most remain until now, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”
According to the acclaimed and respected scholar James Dunn, “This tradition, we can be entirely confident, was formulated as tradition within months of Jesus’ death.”5 The teachings that the very first Christians chose to formulate into creeds and pass on to one another included a list of people to whom the risen Jesus appeared. Not only is Peter first in this list, essentially hanging the proclamation on his authority, but also the list says that Jesus appeared to five hundred people at once.
Second, the proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection invites verification from eyewitnesses. For example, while reporting the above creed about twenty years after Jesus’ death, Paul says that most of the five hundred eyewitnesses are still alive, as if to say, “If you want to talk to the eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus, there are over 250 to choose from!”
This follows the pattern we find reported in Acts 10:40–41, where Peter emphasizes they were eyewitnesses: “God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (NIV).6 Of course, Luke reports other accounts which emphasize that there were eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus, such as the very first proclamation of the gospel found in Acts 2:32, to which we have already referred: “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it” (NIV). To Paul, Peter, and Luke, we can add John’s emphasis of being a witness to the risen Jesus as recorded in John 21:24.
Third, the disciples were willing to die for their belief that the risen Jesus had appeared to them. Of course, being willing to die for a belief does not make that belief true, but it
almost always ensures sincerity. People do not often give up their lives for what they know is wrong. In this case, the disciples were willing to die for something that they claimed to have personally seen: the risen Jesus. The martyrdoms of various eyewitnesses are found in recorded history, starting with Stephen’s martyrdom (Acts 7:60) and including such high-profile disciples as James the brother of John (Acts 12:2) and Peter himself (1 Clement 5:2–7). Having seen Jesus conquer death, they no longer feared death as they had in the garden of Gethsemane. They truly believed Jesus was risen.
For these three reasons and more, the vast majority of scholars are convinced that Jesus’ followers truly believed he had risen from the dead. Accordingly, A. J. M. Wedderburn has said, “It is an indubitable historical datum that sometime, somehow the disciples came to believe that they had seen the risen Jesus.”7
Fact 3: People who were not Jesus’ followers truly believed the risen Jesus appeared to them. Finally, there were some who were not following Jesus that truly believed Jesus had appeared to them after rising from the dead. The first and foremost of these is Saul of Tarsus, also known as Paul. During Jesus’ lifetime, Paul was a student of Rabban Gamaliel who was one of the tannaim, the most influential teachers of the oral Torah in history. According to tradition, Gamaliel was the grandson of the great Jewish teacher Hillel, the eponymous founder of the school of Jewish thought known as the House of Hillel. With such a noble Jewish pedigree, Paul began persecuting Christians, having the authority and zeal to arrest them and even preside over their executions.
Yet something happened to Paul which led him to join those he persecuted, even giving up his high Jewish rank and position. According to Paul, the risen Jesus appeared to him. In the book of Acts, Luke records Paul sharing his testimony three times, where he makes it clear that he converted on account of having seen the risen Jesus. Paul testifies of this reason himself in 1 Corinthians 15. For his proclamation that Jesus had risen from the dead, he was flogged with lashes five times, beaten with rods three times, stoned until assumed dead, and ultimately beheaded.8 Paul had many chances to change his mind or repent, but he gave up everything, including his life, testifying that he had personally seen the risen Jesus.
Another key figure that denied Jesus during his life but followed him after the crucifixion is James the brother of Jesus. In Mark’s gospel we find Jesus’ brothers coming to collect Jesus because they thought he was “out of his mind” (3:21, 31 NIV), and in John’s gospel, Jesus’ brothers taunt him such that the gospel says “not even his brothers believed him” (7:3–5 NIV). Even as Jesus was being crucified, his brothers did not come to support him, such that their mother Mary had to be entrusted to John’s care (John 19:26–27). But then, after Jesus’ crucifixion, we see his brothers counted among the believers (Acts 1:14). The creed in 1 Corinthians 15 tells us why: The risen Jesus appeared to James (v. 7), who then became a leader of the church in Jerusalem (Gal. 1:19) before being executed by Ananus ben Ananus. Four ancient sources report the execution of James the brother of Jesus, including the Jewish historian Josephus.9
So in addition to the disciples, Paul and James—men who were not following Jesus during his lifetime—gave their lives on account of having seen the risen Jesus.10 The self-described “liberal, modern, secularized”11 scholar E. P. Sanders says, “That Jesus’ followers, and later Paul, had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact.”12 David Catchpole, emeritus professor at the University of Exeter, adds, “The appearance to James was . . . not one that could work from an already existing sympathy or commitment. In that respect it was not dissimilar to what happened later to Paul.”13 To this, scholars Shanks and Witherington add, “It appears that James, like Paul, was a convert to the Jesus movement because at some juncture he saw the risen Jesus, for nothing prior to Easter can explain his having become such a follower of Jesus, much less a leader of Jesus’ followers.”14
FROM FACTS TO ARGUMENT
Let us now summarize the minimal facts. When considering the life of Jesus, we can be very confident of these three conclusions: Jesus died by crucifixion; Jesus’ followers truly believed the risen Jesus appeared to them; and people who were not Jesus’ followers truly believed the risen Jesus appeared to them.
Given that the task of a historian is to provide a narrative model that makes the best sense of the historical records, what is the best historical conclusion regarding Jesus’ life? According to the Minimal Facts Approach, the best explanation of the facts, by far, is that Jesus actually rose from the dead. Every other explanation ignores or strains the facts too much to be plausible.
For example, one of the more common alternative hypotheses is that the disciples hallucinated Jesus’ resurrection. It is a well-known medical phenomenon that people recently bereaved of loved ones may hallucinate their presence. Could it be that the disciples, having spent years following Jesus and trusting deeply that he would be their Messiah, were so desperate to see Jesus again that they hallucinated his return?
Jesus’ death by crucifixion (fact 1) certainly can fit in this theory, but does the fact that Jesus’ followers truly believed they had seen the risen Jesus (fact 2) fit? When we consider that he appeared first to Peter, then to the twelve, and then to five hundred people at once, followed by James, it seems hard to account for all these appearances as bereavement hallucinations. There certainly is no medical parallel for five hundred people having the same bereavement hallucination at the same time. For that reason alone, this hypothesis is highly unlikely. Even if there were an unprecedented five hundred people who had bereavement hallucinations, it seems unlikely that every one of them would be convinced they saw Jesus himself instead of a passing dream.
But for the sake of the argument, let us assume that the hallucination hypothesis accounts for fact 2: his disciples truly believed they had seen him risen, but what they actually saw was a hallucination. Even giving that hypothesis the benefit of the doubt, it simply does not account for fact 3: People who did not follow Jesus truly believed he had appeared to them. Paul does not fit the psychological profile of one who would hallucinate the return of Jesus. He had no emotional attachment to Jesus and no hopes vested in him, and Paul had everything to lose. Why would Paul have hallucinated the risen Jesus? It simply does not fit.
Thus the hallucination hypothesis strains fact 2 and does not fit fact 3. It is not a likely hypothesis.
Another theory is that Jesus’ body was stolen by the disciples, and that they promulgated the message of a resurrected Jesus to vindicate their maligned Messiah, though it was a hoax. Fact 1, Jesus’ death, fits into this hypothesis, but fact 2 does not: The disciples truly did believe they had seen the risen Jesus. It is not likely that Peter and James and Stephen and others would have died for a known lie, and certainly not so willingly. Of course, the same can be said of fact 3. Paul and James, men who had not followed Jesus during his life, would have no reason to perpetrate this hoax.
The stolen body hypothesis fits neither fact 2 nor fact 3. It is not a likely hypothesis.
The common Muslim response, as we saw in the previous chapter, is that Jesus did not die on the cross. That theory accounts for facts 2 and 3, but it is a direct contradiction of fact 1: that Jesus died by crucifixion. To posit this hypothesis is, again, to go against the facts.
The Swoon Theory does not fit fact 1. It is not a likely hypothesis.
The hypothesis that fits all the facts, and fits them very well, is exactly what the disciples were proclaiming, along with others who were not disciples: Jesus rose from the dead. It is the only explanation that fits the puzzle pieces together.
The resurrection hypothesis accounts for facts 1, 2, and 3. Since it is the one and only hypothesis that explains the historical facts without straining or ignoring them, an objective observer ought to conclude that Jesus’ resurrection is by far the best explanation of the data.
MIRACLES AND THE OBJECTIVE OBSERVER
At this point, most non-Christian scholars of the h
istorical Jesus follow Sanders in saying, “What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know.”15 Since there is no probable naturalistic explanation, they do not suggest one. That is responsible enough, except that it imposes a naturalist bias—that we cannot conclude a miracle has happened. I would argue that an objective investigator should not have such a bias. We must be open to the idea but be very cautious, not readily jumping to the explanation of a miracle.
It is important to note that in the previous chapter I said, “An objective observer should not conclude that a miracle has occurred unless there is no other probable explanation, and even then only in special circumstances.” In the case of the resurrection of Jesus, unlike the Substitution Theory or the Theistic Swoon Theory, there is no other probable explanation. All other conclusions strain credulity. Even though that is the case, it is still not enough for an objective observer to conclude a miracle has happened. We need special circumstances; specifically, we need a context charged with supernatural expectation.
For example, let us imagine that a blind man who is rummaging through a cupboard above his head accidentally knocks over a bottle, spilling its contents. Oil pours over his head. As he wipes it away, he finds that he can see again. Should he conclude that a miracle has occurred? I would argue that he should not. Although something extraordinary and inexplicable has happened, one should not automatically conclude that all extraordinary and inexplicable occurrences are miracles.
Now imagine that the same blind man has prayed faithfully for years that his sight be restored. While praying one day, he is convinced that God is leading him to go to a stranger’s home. After arguing with himself aloud because he has never heard God speak before, he decides he has nothing to lose, and he makes his way to that home and knocks on the door. The owner of the home comes to the door, and as the man fumbles with words to explain who he is, the owner says, “You don’t have to tell us who you are. Just now my family and I were praying together, and we had a strong intuition that God was sending a blind man to us for healing, and that we were to pray for his sight to be restored and to anoint his head with oil.” The blind man is seated, and as the family prays for his sight to be restored, they anoint him for healing. Oil pours over his head. As he wipes it away, he finds that he can see again.
No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity Page 17