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The resurrection of Jesus has traditionally been a central claim of Christianity. The New Testament documents report that his disciples found his tomb empty, that he appeared to them on numerous occasions, and that his resurrection was a major theme of their message. Paul writes that the resurrected Jesus appeared to him, and that Jesus’ resurrection is an essential doctrine. “If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.”1

Did Jesus rise from the dead? This paper examines the arguments that have been given against the resurrection, and the responses of apologists to the objections. The arguments are often at the philosophical level rather than the exegetical, but they affect biblical interpretation because they challenge the accuracy and authority of the text, and the interpretive method Christians use on the text. If the texts report as fact something that didn’t actually happen, and report a central belief that is misguided or totally erroneous, then it is doubtful that we should view the texts even as helpful guides to religious truth. Since the resurrection of Jesus is a central truth-claim of orthodox Christianity, any questions about its validity automatically call into question the validity of the Christian faith itself, and call for apologetic responses dealing with the philosophical worldview behind the objections. But some people do not accept this claim. Even some who call themselves Christians do not believe that Jesus was resurrected in any physical way – they may believe, for example, that Jesus’ body continued to decompose and he lived in the sense that his disciples continued his work. These denials or reinterpretations are based on the practically universal observation that dead people stay dead. Billions of deaths have shown that death is the end of life, and the odds of a resurrection are therefore smaller than 1 billion to one. It is consequently irrational to believe that Jesus is an exception to the rule, they say. Although nonmiraculous explanations may seem implausible, they are preferred over the billion-to-one idea of resurrection.

First century

Disbelief is not a modern phenomenon. The New Testament reports the disciples did not at first believe. “When they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.”2 The women “told all this to the eleven and to all the rest…but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”3 The disciples were not gullible fools. Although they believed the OT scriptures that spoke of miraculous resuscitations and had reportedly seen Jesus bring other people back to life, they also knew that dead people stay dead; they did not expect Jesus to come back to life.4 Even after he had appeared to them, their belief was mixed with doubt: “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.”5 If the first-century readers did not believe in the permanence of death, the resurrection of Jesus would have had little persuasive power. The disciples and the readers realized that they were making an extraordinary claim, a claim that Jesus was an exception to all previous experience.

Although thousands of Jews came to believe in Jesus as a crucified and resurrected Messiah, most Jews apparently did not believe. Some were offended by his teachings, others by his crucifixion, but no doubt the implausibility of a resurrection scandalized them as well. The resurrection of one person (as opposed to a general resurrection at the end of the age) was not part of their religious beliefs, and they could not accept such an idea even though dozens of people claimed to have seen proof. The religious climate of first-century Judea was just as hostile to Christian faith as the secular world is today.

Greek philosophers would have scoffed at the idea of a resurrection.6 Even within Christianity, resurrection was not an easy idea to accept. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians shows that some Corinthian believers doubted the need for a resurrection, and Paul points out that this implied that Jesus was not truly resurrected.7 Some Corinthian Christians were apparently too “spiritual” to believe that the human body had any enduring value. Although Paul does not report what they thought about the resurrection of Jesus specifically, it is likely that they viewed it as completely noncorporeal, as a spirit being leaving the body behind in the dust. But Paul’s view of resurrection involved a body – a dramatically changed body, but a body nonetheless – “it is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.”8 A noncorporeal resurrection has the advantage of being unfalsifiable, in making no claims about the physical world that are contradicted by our experience, but Christianity makes claims about Jesus’ bodily resurrection that flatly contradict our experience that dead people remain dead.

How did people respond to the claims that the disciples were making? The initial reaction for almost everyone was probably “That’s preposterous.” A more serious response is reported in Matthew 28:11-15:

Many critics believe that this passage was invented by Matthew, but the story is too complex to be a purely Matthean invention. It betrays several levels in the argument. It reports not just a distant memory, but a fact verifiable at the time of final editing: unbelieving Jews were claiming that the disciples stole Jesus’ body while the guard slept. Matthew probably included this passage in his Gospel to respond to such a claim, and he probably considered it as the claim most worth refuting. The unbelieving Jews apparently agreed that Jesus’ tomb was empty; they made no allegations that Jesus was buried elsewhere, or that the disciples went to the wrong tomb.9 To reconstruct the argument:

1. First, the disciples say that the tomb is empty.
2. The unbelieving Jews then say, that’s because the disciples stole the body.
3. The believers then say, We couldn’t have, because there was a guard.
4. The unbelievers say (rather than denying the existence of a guard), the disciples stole the body while the guard was asleep.
5. Finally, Matthew explains that the guard was bribed to say that.10

The argument presupposes that in Matthew’s day, the unbelieving Jews talked of a guard at the tomb. It was the first of many attempts not just merely to deny the resurrection, but to explain the evidence in a different way.

The early church

The early Christian apologists defended the validity of an end-of-age resurrection of the body, without dealing with the resurrection of Jesus. As it may have been in Corinth, the end-of-age resurrection was apparently the focus of objections; the resurrection of Jesus was considered a minor anomaly compared to the scandal of eternal bodies. Craig writes,

Some of Celsus’s objections were easily refuted; others were used again by later critics – notably the idea that the disciples simply had visions or hallucinations of Jesus out of wishful thinking.12 Origen admits that this possibility “seems to have a considerable degree of force” but he says it is “unconvincing, since the visions occurred in broad daylight and the persons involved were neither mentally unbalanced nor delirious.”13

Celsus also claimed that a discrepancy in the Gospel accounts discredited their reliability. Origen offered a simple harmonization, but as Craig notes, “In drawing attention to the discrepancies in the resurrection narratives, Celsus has grasped the end of a thread that would eventually threaten to unravel the whole fabric of the accounts.”14 The discrepancy that Celsus noted was only the tip of an iceberg, and better answers would have to await more thorough critiques. Just as Celsus initiated some arguments that would be seen time and again by critics, Origen offered a response that would be a staple of later apologetics works: the fact that the disciples risked their lives for their teaching shows that they did not invent it.

Eusebius gave a more thorough response to the conspiracy theory. How could anyone so vigorously promote Jesus’ teachings about honesty while perpetrating a fraud? “How could so many – that is, the twelve apostles plus the 70 disciples – agree together to lie?… Why would they die for him when he was dead, after they had deserted him when he was alive?”16 Eusebius also notes that the disciples write about themselves in unflattering terms, and if they were just making things up, they would not have recorded either their own or Jesus’ weaknesses.17 Eusebius, a historian, also anticipated later apologetics by noting that the quality of historical evidence in the Gospels is as good as that for secular history. “If we distrust these men, then we must distrust all writers who have compiled lives and histories and records of men.”18

But Eusebius was the end of an era: “the last great champion of the historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus until the dawning of the Renaissance.”19 Craig attributes this to the passage of time: “As the events connected with the origin of Christianity receded further and further into the past, arguments from miracles and the resurrection rested necessarily more and more upon faith in the accuracy of the biblical documents.”20 He also notes “the dearth of historiography” in the Middle Ages. Not even the scholars seemed to know how to evaluate historical claims, as shown by the naive acceptance of the Donation of Constantine. In this age, it seems, truth was established more by authority than by argument.

Enlightenment

Argument was not totally abandoned, however. Aquinas advanced the argument that the existence of the church itself showed that it had a miraculous beginning21 – an argument still used despite its weaknesses.22 The biggest apologetic need of the Middle Ages was vis-a-vis Islam, and in this Jesus’ resurrection was not a central issue. Nor was it an issue in the Reformation itself, although the Reformation challenged the validity of authority and tradition and thus sowed the seeds of skepticism. Craig notes that the Spanish Catholic Juan Luis Vives in 1543 argued that the disciples were neither deceived nor deceivers – “a rudimentary form of the dilemma developed by subsequent apologists….. Vives’s arguments are primitive…but they are among the first glimmerings of a historical approach to the credibility of Scripture.”23 Vives did not just cite authorities – he reasoned about the quality of the evidence, which suggests that some people had doubts about it.

Similarly, the Huguenot Philippe de Mornay in 1581 argued, as Eusebius had, that the disciples’ willingness to report weakness is testimony to their credibility.24 Hugo Grotius in 1627 argued that many people had seen Jesus, and “it would have been impossible for so many to conspire together to perpetrate such a hoax.”25 In 1662, Pascal ridiculed the idea of a conspiracy.26 The heterodox Racovian Catechism (1680) noted that the disciples were willing to suffer and die for their belief.27

Jacques Abbadie in 1684 argued that the transformation of the disciples from fearful to fearless is evidence of a miracle – “no one dies for a fiction which they have invented.”28 Abaddie argues that if the disciples were writing fiction, they would have made themselves look better, and he argues that there was a guard at the tomb (indirect evidence that some were challenging it as fictitious) because Matthew reports it as an already public rumor.29 In some good backwards reasoning, he reasons “the widespread story that the disciples stole the body while the guards slept can not be accounted for if in point of fact the guard had never been set.”30

Deism

The biggest apologetic challenge came from the Deists, who denied the existence of all miracles. Deism began in early 16th century France but because of rigid censorship laws it did not initially make much of an impact there.31 In England, Lord Herbert of Cherbury published a Deist treatise in 1624, and Charles Blount published three in 1679-1680 during a temporary lapse in censorship laws. Deist thought was supported by several currents: Spinoza’s skepticism (1670), Locke’s rationalism (c. 1689),32 and Richard Simon’s and Jean Le Clerc’s biblical criticism (1678).33

When censorship was permanently removed, John Toland published Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) and many others followed in the early 1700s: Anthony Collin’s Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724), Thomas Woolston’s Six Discourses on the Miracles of Our Saviour(1727-1730), Mathew Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730), Thomas Chubb’s A Discourse Concerning Reason (1731), Thomas Morgan’s The Moral Philosopher (1738-1740), and Peter Annet’s The Resurrection of Jesus Considered (1744).34 Notable responses to the Deist challenges came from Bishop Thomas Sherlock, The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection (1729), and Richard Bentley, Remarks Upon a Late Discourse of Free-Thinking(1737).35

Part of the Deist argument was that miracles are simply impossible: An omniscient, omnipotent God would have created a world that he did not need to intervene in.36 Spinoza had argued against the possibility of miracles,37 and in 1748 Hume argued against the possibility of identifying any.38 The witnesses are more likely to be wrong, no matter how many, than that a real miracle has taken place.39

Woolston argued specifically against the resurrection of Jesus, calling it a monstrous fraud. In a flight of fiction, he postulated that the Pharisees and disciples had agreed to watch the tomb to see if Jesus’ predictions of his own resurrection would come true. But the disciples then stole the body, perhaps by bribing the guard or getting them drunk. Though this may be unlikely, it is to be preferred over the impossibility of a resurrection. “Because the resurrection violates the course of Nature, no human testimony could possibly establish it, since it has the whole witness of Nature against it.”40 But weren’t the disciples willing to put their lives on the line? Woolston replies, “Many other criminals and cheats have gone to their death proclaiming their innocence.”41 Sherlock replied with a mock “trial” of the witnesses, and Craig notes that Sherlock was able to assume that the witnesses were innocent unless proven guilty, that is, that the resurrection happened unless proven wrong.42 Sherlock notes that Woolston has no evidence for his theory, that neither Jesus nor his disciples were the type of people to perpetrate fraud.

Sherlock’s response was popular, but it seems inadequate. 1) Even if the guards were asleep, it would have been reasonable for them to infer that the body was stolen by the people who had the most to gain from it, the disciples. 2) Sherlock’s second point totally ignores Woolston’s theory of bribe or drunkenness. 3) His third point seems to assume something that is actually in question.

Sherlock does better when he discusses the claim that Jesus should have appeared to more people. Sherlock replies 1) Jesus had already told his enemies that they would not see him again, 2) We cannot require Jesus to appear to all the people we want him to, 3) The resurrection appearances were primarily to teach and prepare his disciples for their mission.44 He reasserts that disciples’ willingness to die is evidence that what they said was true.45 Here again Sherlock’s argument appears to be an inadequate response to Woolston’s claim.

Peter Annet responded to Sherlock’s book in 1744. He abandoned Woolston’s theory, claiming that Jesus did not really predict his own resurrection – citing as evidence that the women came to anoint a dead body, not to see a resurrection. “Annet gives more careful attention to the biblical records than did either Woolston or Sherlock. In doing so, he notes a host of discrepancies in the Gospel accounts.”46 He said that Matthew invented the guard story: “Surely the Jewish leaders could have invented a better excuse than that the guard fell asleep! And had the guard actually been so terrified as to become as dead men, could a bribe really have shut them up from telling what actually happened?”47 Annet makes no attempt to explain how or if the tomb was empty.48

Annet was quickly answered by Charles Moss, The Evidence of the Resurrection Cleared (1744), and Annet responded with another tract in 1745. Sherlock then revised Moss’s work as The Sequel of the Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection (1749).49 Moss argued that some of Jesus’ predictions were made in public, and it was possible for the Jewish leaders to suspect a resurrection while the disciples did not. He defends the guard story as verifiable, and within the range of behavior of Jewish leaders and guards.50

France

Meanwhile, various Deist works and responses were translated into French and German.51 Voltaire (who lived in England in 1726-29), Rousseau and others added their powerful pens to argue that reason must prevail. Voltaire attributed “the doctrines of Christianity to the encrustations with which the church overlaid the simple teachings of Jesus, who, he said, never preached a single dogma of Christianity.”52 Rousseau wrote that he would not believe in a miracle even if the witnesses numbered a thousand.53 Diderot wrote that he would not believe in a resurrection even if everyone in Paris were to say that they saw it themselves.54 It is simply more reasonable to believe that all the witnesses are mistaken than to believe in a miracle.55 Monod describes the attitude:

“Given the a priori impossibility of miracles, Craig concludes, the evidentialist argument for Christianity could not even get off the ground.”57 Responses included Abbé Claude François Houteville, La religion chrétienne prouvée par les faits (1740), Jean Alphonse Turretin and Jacob Vernet,Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne (10 vols., 1730-88), and Sylvestre Bergier, Le Déism réfuté par lui-même (1765) and Traité historique et dogmatique de la vraie religion (1780).58 Although some argued for the philosophical possibility of miracles, their arguments were not well received, perhaps because Voltaire and Rousseau were better writers, and perhaps because the church in France had alienated too many thinkers.

Vernet shows the extent of the historical argumentation that had developed by then. He gave these points for the reliability of the Gospels for historical research:

Some of these points are weak; others evidence a sophisticated use of historical reasoning. Vernet reasoned that the disciples had a need to write their doctrines, because of the geographic spread that they worked in, and that many eyewitnesses would be available at the time of writing to testify whether they came from their alleged authors. The external evidence on the authorship is consistent.60 If the Bible is evaluated by the standards used for other writings accepted by historians, it comes across as better than most.61

Germany

English Deist writings and the responses thereto were translated into German, but the Germans were not too impressed with the responses, for the responses were based on rationalism, which was rejected by orthodox theologians.62 Deism received a boost in Prussia by the presence of Diderot, Voltaire, and other French free-thinkers.63 Johann Christian Edelmann added indigenous support in 1740, amplified by Reimarus (1754) and Lessing, who published fragments of Reimarus’s Apologie beginning in 1774.

Reimarus, like the Deists, wrote in 1754 “that miracles contradict the order of creation and that therefore it is impossible for a rational man to believe in them.”64 In the Fragments, he emphasized the contradictions in the Gospel accounts, and concluded that the disciples had turned the simple Jewish piety of Jesus into “a new religion by means of deception and fraud.”65 The disciples were disappointed that the kingdom did not immediately appear, so they stole the body and made everything up in the hope of financial gain. Reimarus rejected the story of the guard, saying that Jesus “rose” sooner than predicted, the disciples seemed to be unaware of any predictions, that the chief priests would not have all gone to Pilate on Passover, or that they could all conspire to a falsehood.66 He discredited the disciples’ testimony by pointing out numerous discrepancies and contradictions in the accounts.67 Last, Reimarus scoffed at the proof from prophecy, which had been a traditional apologetic approach in the Middle Ages, as involving strained interpretations.68 Baird says, “In all of this, Reimarus sounds like a noisy echo of the English deists. However, there is a distinctive difference: Reimarus did not simply ridicule the supernatural details; he incorporated the elements of criticism into a system that is a total reconstruction of the history of early Christianity.”69 Craig notes another point of originality: “his portrayal of Jesus as a political Messiah figure whom the disciples later exalted to the status of a spiritual ruler.”70

Lessing himself was less caustic, but he still argued that “revelation gives nothing to the human race which human reason could not arrive at on its own” – a rationalistic, Deistic position – and that truths of faith are not dependent on the truths of history – a potentially fideistic approach. For Lessing, faith depended on reason, with minimal reference to the verifiable world. He published Reimarus’s Apologie as the Fragments because it supported his view that religious truths cannot rest on historical evidence.71

Reimarus was answered by Weigmann (1778), Ress (1779), Michaelis (1782), Flessing (1786), and Herder (1794), but most notably by Johann Semler (1779).72 Semler disagreed with the Fragments “on the two fundamental issues: (1) the intention of Jesus, arguing that he did not simply appropriate the Jewish expectation of an earthly Messiah; and (2) the intention of the disciples, arguing that they did not commit intentional fraud.”73 Semler considered the historical context, and asked, “If Jesus had taught nothing but Judaism…why was he attacked by the Jews?”74 And he considers it implausible that the disciples “could have changed Jesus’ whole system of doctrine in a few days.”75 Semler agrees with earlier apologists when he concludes that

The charge that the early Christians committed fraud in order to attain earthly power and glory is refuted by their willingness to endure persecution for their faith. All the available historical evidence shows that the disciples truly believed the message they proclaimed.76

He agreed that the Gospel details cannot be harmonized, but stated that faith was immune from historical data.77 One does not believe in Jesus because of his resurrection, but the resurrection should be believed because Jesus taught it!78 Further, he agreed that prophecy does not prove the resurrection. He admitted two of Reimarus’s major points but denied that they proved anything.79 Reimarus wrote as a Deist, but by the time hisFragments were published, the intellectual currents had moved on. Faith had been separated from history.

Nevertheless, historical data do exist and can be investigated. It seems that everyone in this age accepts the tomb being empty. Although apologists may mention the possibility of the disciples being deceived, they do this briefly – it does not appear that anyone has suggested a plausible way for the disciples to be so deceived.80 The hoax theory was still dominant among critics, and the disciples’ willingness to die was the favorite answer. They had neither motive nor the means of carrying out a conspiracy. Craig summarized a point made by Less: “Were the gospel authors inventing stories, they would never have made them of such a nature that their truth could be so easily investigated and confirmed or disconfirmed.”81 Ditton ridicules the hoax theory by summarizing what a Deist would have to believe:

After Deism

In 1776, Edward Gibbon, in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, provided an indirect challenge to the resurrection by providing a naturalistic explanation for the growth of Christianity. He did not deny a supernatural cause, but offered “secondary” causes: Jewish zeal, the hope of heaven and threat of hell, miracles throughout church history, strict morality, and church authority.83 The mention of miracles was a two-edged sword, however, since many of Gibbon’s contemporaries denied the veracity of miracles reported by Eusebius and others. By putting biblical miracles on an equal level with later reports, Gibbon invited questions about the historicity of the biblical miracles as well. These “secondary” causes were sufficient, however: “Given these five factors along with the decline in zeal for paganism, the success of Christianity was all but inevitable; in fact almost any superstition that had come along would have displaced the decayed paganism of that era.”84

Since Gibbon claimed to believe in the divine origin of the church and his attack was indirect, it was not until 1794 that an adequate defense was published: William Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity. Paley responded not just to Gibbon, but also to Hume and all the skeptics before him, and gave an admirable defense of the resurrection. If God exists, he argued, it is to be expected that he would reveal himself to humans, and this would involve some sort of miracle.85

Paley noted evidence for the early date and authenticity of the Gospels: 1) They are cited as authoritative even by early authors, 2) They were collected into a volume at an early date, 3) They were publicly read as authoritative, 4) Harmonies and commentaries were written on them, 5) Even Celsus and heretical groups accepted them, 6) The apocryphal books were never treated like the canonical Gospels.86 He also argues that, since the disciples believed that Jesus was the Messiah, they must have believed that there was something miraculous about him, and “that the original story should be lost and another replace it goes beyond any known example of corruption of even oral tradition, not to speak of the experience of written transmission.”87

Paley dealt at some length with the theory that the disciples simply had visions or hallucinations of Jesus: 1) Many people saw him at the same time, on several occasions. 2) They talked with him, ate with him, and touched him. 3) Most importantly, no one ever produced the body. Craig notes on this last point,

Paley even used a historical argument to support the sufferings of the apostles: “Jesus’s predictions in the gospels of sufferings for his followers were either real predictions come true or were put into his mouth because persecution had in fact come about.”89 Paley no doubt believed in the first alternative, but offered the second as he explored the alternatives as a historian might. He summarized the significance:

Paley was the end of an era. Craig says, “During the nineteenth century this evidentialist approach dramatically recedes and almost disappears…. It is difficult to find a significant and influential nineteenth century figure arguing for the truth of the Christian religion on the grounds of the historical evidence for the resurrection.”91 Perhaps Paley had provided a thorough enough answer for the time, perhaps there was a diminished interest in historical arguments as Romanticism thrived. Theologians became less interested in history as faith was assumed to be totally separate from historical facts. “I know he lives,” they might say, “because he lives in me.” It was an experiential claim, a subjective claim.92

German Rationalists

By the end of the 18th century, Craig writes, “the theft hypothesis, so dear to Deism, had apparently pretty much lost conviction, and a new explanation was needed. This German rationalism found in the apparent death (Scheintod) theory.” Karl Bahrdt published the fanciful theory that Jesus was part of a secret group of Essenes, and with the help of Luke and drugs, faked his own death. After being resuscitated, he lived among the Essenes.93 Heinrich Paulus, the king of naturalistic interpretations, nevertheless believed in inexplicable resuscitation. He gave five lines of evidence to argue that Jesus lived again:

From this evidence, Paulus believed that the disciples believed that God had raised Jesus. Paulus himself opted for a temporary coma and unexplained revivification with the same mortal body. “Jesus himself was quite amazed to be alive; hence, his exclamation of surprise, ‘I am not yet ascended to the Father!”’95 Paulus viewed the guard story as a Jewish invention, which Matthew unwittingly reported as a fact.96 Schleiermacher’s view on the resurrection is not clear. He spoke of a “spiritual” death, explicitly rejected the “apparent death” theory, claimed that Jesus returned to a truly human life.97 This fits into the German trend of separating spiritual truth from physical truth.

Strauss

The naturalistic explanations of the rationalists were more contrived and less plausible than the harmonizations of the orthodox. Neither the hallucination theory nor the hoax theory seemed historically credible. But how could be facts be explained without recourse to miracles?98 How could sincere men risk their lives to teach something that could not possibly be true? In 1835, David Strauss offered a way out of the dilemma. He scoffed at the plausibility of a hoax:

And he rejected the possibility that a nearly dead man barely revived could convince others that he had conquered death.100

Strauss offered a mythological explanation. The disciples sincerely believed that Jesus was the Messiah and therefore ascribed to him all the miracles that Jewish myths had said that the Messiah would do. Whether Jesus actually performed his miracles was irrelevant to the evangelists – by these stories they were simply claiming that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. He was buried in an unknown grave and resurrected in the minds of the sincere but imaginative disciples. “Incapable of thinking of Jesus as dead, they were deluded into thinking that he had risen and appeared to them.”101 They had a vision, as Paul later did, and built all sorts of details into it after the fact.102 In this reductionistic approach Strauss kept the sincerity of the disciples by making them gullible and naive.

Christian Weisse in 1838 wrote a similar view: “The idea of the resurrection has its source in the disciples’ experience of the presence of Christ”; all the details were made up.103 Ernest Renan wrote a French Life of Jesus in 1863 with similar claims: The miracles were hoaxes, the resurrection was created by the imagination of Mary Magdalene and repeated by the weak-minded disciples. “The little Christian society…resuscitated Jesus in their hearts by the intense love which they bore toward him.”104

Strauss rejected so much of the Gospels that there was little basis for discussion except at a more fundamental level – methodology. As Craig notes, “It is no longer effective to argue for the resurrection today simply by refuting theories as to who stole the body or that Jesus did not really die. They are no longer the issue. The issue is whether the gospel narratives are historically credible accounts or unhistorical legends.”105

In his 1837 Life of Jesus, August Neander used the traditional argument that “the facticity of the resurrection is proved by the change in the behavior of Jesus’ followers.”106 In the same year, Wilhelm de Wette rejected “both the rationalistic view that Jesus only appeared to die and the liberal notion that the appearances were merely visionary, but he did not deal with Strauss directly. He said that the resurrection was beyond historical research:

Thus not to deny the fact itself, but rather to recognize the incomprehensibility of it, to reject a theoretical ordering of it in our usual historical and physical knowledge, and thus not to reject it because of its impossibility, but rather…to leave the view open to a higher nature of things.”107

Johann Hug faulted Strauss for compromising the historical approach through his a priori assumption about the impossibility of miracles.108 He argued that the apostolic age did not naively accept myths – they had a concern for accuracy. He noted that since Jesus did not conform to Jewish messianic expectations, the disciples did not simply apply OT-based myths to Jesus.109 Friedrich Tholuck, although preferring a subjective approach, pointed out that contradictions in the accounts do not disqualify the Gospels as sources of valid history.110 He then provided an argument for the early date and reliability of Luke-Acts.111

F.C. Baur pointed out that Strauss did not explain why the disciples would think that Jesus had to rise from the dead.112 Baur recognized that the church began with faith in the resurrection, but he claimed that “the question as to the nature and the reality of the resurrection lies outside the sphere of historical inquiry.”113 However, he later said that Jesus did not rise bodily, but only “in the faith of the disciples.”114

A more complete response to Strauss would have to await research into the development of mythology, to show that the scenario he proposed is unprecedented and implausible.115 Nor can we dismiss the story of the tomb so easily; it is not historically plausible that “Matthew” would write that the Jewish leaders were talking about body-theft when they were actually saying that crucified criminals are usually thrown on the trash-heap.

But mythological explanations are still offered by theologians who assert that “the resurrection actually means ________,” when they fill in the blank with something other than a dead person coming back to life.116 Sometimes they are given as modern reinterpretations, sometimes it is claimed that the disciples actually meant this even though they chose a word (“resurrection”) that all their readers would understand in a materialistic way. According to these theories, the resurrection has meaning only for those who believe (believe in what?); it says nothing about a person who died. This semantic smoke-and-mirrors trick serves only to disguise the fact that these theologians do not believe in the resurrection (as that word is normally used), but in something else.

Objective vision theories

Some theologians have tried to hold a resurrection faith one step removed from historical fact. In 1872, Theodor Keim argued that the resurrection is well attested, but the physical details are unreliable. The empty tomb story cannot be trusted, but neither the body-theft theory nor the apparent death theory make sense. He called the appearances visions caused by God.117 In 1885, Heinrich Ewald argued that Jesus’ appearances were first described as visions, and only later were physical details added.118 Reginald Fuller claims that “the resurrection involved a direct translation of Jesus from the grave to an exalted and glorified existence.”119

Similarly, Hans Grass claims that Jesus was resurrected but that there was no physical evidence. The old body remained dead, and the appearances were God-given visions rather than in the physical world.120 But this makes the visions deceptive rather than revelatory, and faith fideistic. Grass says he will believe whether or not there are facts, in the same way that the Deists said that they will not believe no matter what the facts. Both approaches seem to evade the fact that spirit works in the physical world.

These theories entail rejecting the Gospel accounts that go out of their way to emphasize the physicalness of the resurrected Jesus. They also downplay the implications of Paul viewing the eschatological resurrection as involving a change rather than abandonment of the body. And they ignore the empty tomb.121

A powerful response to all “vision” theories is the historical evidence for the empty tomb. Craig gives eight lines of evidence: 1) Jesus’ burial is one of the best-attested events in Jesus’ life, found in all four Gospels, Acts, and Paul. This implies that his burial place was known. And the writers would have little reason to invent the story that the tomb was owned by a member of the Sanhedrin. 2) Paul gives evidence of the empty tomb – the only way to know that Jesus rose “on the third day,” as early Christian tradition held, is to check the tomb. Jewish beliefs about “resurrection” would necessarily include the body. 3) The tomb story is found in Mark and is therefore very old. 4) The phrase “first day of the week” is Semitic and evidences that the tradition is very old. 5) The stories are simple narratives, without theological or legendary developments. 6) If the writers were inventing witnesses, it is unlikely that they would choose women to be first. 7) The disciples would not be able to preach about a resurrection in Jerusalem if the body was found (or even if the tomb location were in dispute) 8) Early Jewish polemic against Christians accepts the empty tomb.122

Three theories have been advanced to explain the empty tomb: conspiracy, apparent death, and wrong tomb, and they have been generally abandoned.123 The hallucination theory also founders. Peters concisely says, “historical research has not produced any convincing evidence that the event of Jesus’ resurrection fits the model of myth, pure legend or delusion.”124

I believe that the evidence, evaluated historically, points to an empty tomb, and I believe that a skeptic would make more sense in trying to explain it rather than denying it. For example: While the guards slept, graverobbers were able to sneak in, unwrap many of the grave clothes to lighten their load, and haul the body away. They dumped the body in the desert and went to Jericho to sell the spices. A few disciples, distraught at the empty tomb and subconsciously remembering Jesus’ prediction of resurrection, had visions of him, and in a game of religious oneupmanship, they all claimed to see him, and through repetition, created false memories, and so on… Such a scenario may seem unlikely, but to a skeptic it may seem more plausible than a resurrection. As Sherlock Holmes said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”125

The disciples’ belief about Jesus’ resurrection does not match any pagan beliefs, nor does it match Jewish expectations. It would have been easy for disciples to proclaim that they had seen visions of Jesus being in heaven with Abraham – that would have had Jewish precedent and could not be disproven – but the disciples made the much more astonishing, and much more falsifiable claim, that Jesus had been raised.126 The most reasonable explanation for their belief is that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead.

A question of history?

However, is a resurrection a “historical” explanation, or does “history” by definition exclude miracle? Ulrich Wilckens argues that it is “inherently impossible to prove the resurrection historically.” He thinks all naturalistic explanations are refuted, but says, “How the grave of Jesus became empty is a question that cannot be…answered in a historical way.”127 But as Craig asks, if you have ruled out everything else, “Why not accept the explanation given in the religious context of the event itself?’128 But I agree in part with Wilckens: It is well within history to conclude that the disciples believed that God raised Jesus from the dead. It may even be within history to say that Jesus was apparently alive after his crucifixion. It may even be within history to say that Jesus was apparently resurrected, but it seems outside of history to claim that God is the cause of his resurrection. This is more a theological or philosophical claim – and it is legitimate to make this claim – but it is not legitimate to call it a historical conclusion.129

History can ask whether a purported event really happened, but it must also ask whether it has the tools to investigate the event. Either Jesus healed a leper or not, but history is unable to investigate the claim. Likewise history as a discipline cannot investigate whether God raised Jesus. That does not mean that it is an illegitimate question, but it means that other disciplines must enter the discussion in order for a conclusion to be drawn.

C.F.D. Moule wrote, “If a historical event occurs for which there is no discernable explanation within the historian’s ambit, it is not unreasonable to give weight to a well-supported claim that the explanation lies in some other realm.”130 Leon Morris concludes, “The idea that God intervened and raised Jesus at least covers the facts; nothing else suggested so far does. Admittedly the strict application of the historical method does not ‘prove’ the Resurrection. Yet the facts do point to this.”131

If the definition of “history” is the problem, I suggest setting it aside. Simply say, “The historical evidence precludes any naturalistic explanation, and the historical method seems unable to give a plausible answer.” Then, “Based on metaphysical considerations, I believe that God exists and would have reason to send an incarnation into this world and resurrect him.132 Considering this larger context, I believe that the best explanation of the evidence is the one given to it by people who claimed to be eyewitnesses: that God raised Jesus from the dead.”

Of course, someone with a different worldview will weigh the evidence differently.133 Although many people who reject the possibility of miracles are guilty of a priori reasoning, not all are. Some have looked at the evidence and have still concluded that a preposterous psychological explanation is to be preferred to an “impossible” divine one. The same evidence will not convince everyone, but then, few believe because of arguments, anyway.134

Endnotes

1 1 Cor 15:14. New Revised Standard used throughout.

2 Mark 16:11. Although this verse was apparently not in the original text, it shows that the early church believed that the disciples’ initial response was disbelief. Only after Jesus appeared to them did they believe.

3 Luke 24:9-11. The women believed only because they had seen Jesus.

4 Luke 7:11-17.

5 Matt 28:17. Literally, it says that “they” doubted, implying that the people who worshipped also doubted. This is probably typical for anyone undergoing a major revision in understanding what is possible. “Can this really be true? Is this only a weird dream?” In Matthew, the doubt may have been whether worship was appropriate.

6 Acts 17:32. Many Greeks would have believed in the immortality of the soul and would have considered a resurrection (i.e., of the body) as unnecessary and even demeaning.

7 1 Cor 15:12-13.

8 1 Cor 15:44. By talking of a pneumatikos body, Paul does not mean a body made out of pneuma (whatever that could mean) any more than he means a body made out of psyche when he talks of a psychikos body (translated as “physical body” in the NRSV). No matter what it is made of, it is still a sôma, from which Greeks wanted to escape. Paul speaks of the transformation of the old body into the new (v. 51) rather than an abandonment of the old body. His analogy of the seed (vv. 37-38) suggests the same.

Some sort of noncorporeal theory may lie behind 2 Tim 2:18, too: “claiming that the resurrection has already taken place.” The false teachers apparently did not deny the resurrection, but claimed that it passed without any observable evidence. The bodies were still in the graves, but the souls had supposedly been raised. Paul argues that these noncorporeal theories of resurrection are erroneous, as I will argue later in this paper.

9 If unbelievers had made such claims, and if Matthew was free to invent stories, then presumably he would have. I find it interesting that no one suggested that ordinary grave-robbers stole the body. But if people were not normally buried with anything of value, grave-robbers would have been rare in first-century Judea.

10 Argument paraphrased from William Lane Craig, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1989), 207.

11 William Lane Craig, The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1985), 40.

12 Origen, Contra Celsus 2.60. Online: http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-04/anf04-56.htm#P8324_2084918 No one should assume that psychological theories are possible only with the advent of modern psychology! The ancients were not unaware of mental phenomena.

13 Craig, Historical, 43. Further evidence against the hallucination theory will be presented later.

14 Ibid. Reimarus and Strauss are critics who pulled this thread the hardest.

15 Origen, Contra Celsus, 2.10. Online: http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-04/anf04-56.htm#P8063_1973969 Although Origen did not make this specific point, this argument refutes the allegation reported in Matthew 28:13. One person might be willing to die for a lie he had invented, but it is implausible that an entire group would. The disciples were sincere in their beliefs. They were not conspirators, body thieves or intentional deceivers.

16 Craig, Historical, 47, citing Demonstratio Evangelica 3.5.

17 Ibid., 48.

18 Ibid. Craig considers this an excellent starting point for modern apologetics (Historical, 544).

19 Ibid., 49.

20 Ibid. The documents became supported by church authority.

21 Ibid., 69.

22 Craig advocates a form of this argument for modern apologetics (Historical, 535-538), but it seems that a similar argument would support Islam, showing that the argument itself is of limited value. It seems to be a variant of the argument, “Many people believe it, so it must be true.”

23 Ibid., 192.

24 Ibid., 190.

25 Ibid., 206. Grotius also used the dilemma of deceived or deceivers (Ibid., 207).

26 Ibid., 209.

27 Ibid., 200.

28 Ibid., 212-214, citing Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne, volume 2. “Abaddie’s Traité, which was translated into German and English, is perhaps the finest apologetic work of the century” (ibid., 212).

29 Ibid., 215-216.

30 Ibid., 218.

31 Ibid., 74-75. Grotius, Pascal, and Abaddie responded to some of the Deist arguments. Deism grew in France in the 18th century through the radical skepticism of Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire (1696) and the literary genius of Voltaire.

32 Although Locke was not a Deist, and he believed in the resurrection, the Deists built on Locke’s insistence that faith must conform to reason (William Baird, History of New Testament Research, Volume 1: From Deism to Tübingen (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 33-38). Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity appeared in 1695. “Deists, such as Toland…appealed to Locke for his rationalism in religious matters, while orthodox thinkers followed Locke in his defense of revealed religion on the basis of miracles…. Collins…adopts many of Locke’s arguments from his letters on toleration to support his Deism” (Craig, Historical, 254).

33 Le Clerc in 1685, supposedly arguing against the Deists, argued against biblical inspiration – but he also argued that the historical evidence supported the general reliability of the Gospels, and that the minor contradictions showed that the disciples did not conspire to deceive (Craig,Historical, 112, 115).

“No true disciple of Simon and Le Clerc is to be found until Jean Astruc and Johann Semler in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The influence of these early biblical critics upon Deism consisted in their removing the aura of sanctity from the Holy Scriptures by handling them like any other historical work and in the doubts they created concerning the reliability and authority of the Bible” (Ibid., 121).

34 Baird, 39-56. “The principal Deist works came to a close with the posthumous publication of Lord Bolingbroke’s Works in 1754. Deist works continued to appear sporadically during the rest of the century, but [in England] the fire of the controversy had gone out” (Craig, Historical, 261).

35 Craig, Historical, 120.

36 The argument of Annet (Baird, 51) and Voltaire (Craig, Historical, 100),

37 Baird, 6, and Craig, Historical, 253, 298.

38 Craig, Historical, 299. “Although his posthumously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) reveal Hume to have been more agnostic than a Deist, nevertheless his Enquiries…and his Natural History of Religion (1757) are consistent with a Deist viewpoint…. Although Hume in his critical side allies himself with Deism in its critique of revealed religion, his thought also tended to the dissolution of Deism, even prior to the publication of the Dialogues, by strengthening the skepticism concerning self-sufficiency of reason and the possibility of a natural religion” (Ibid., 261).

39 Some modern responses: Wolfhart Pannenberg argues for the possibility of miracles in the physical world (Craig, Historical, 513, citing Basic Questions in Theology (trans. G.H. Kehm; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970), 40-50) and Richard Niebuhr similarly argues that “the historian must be open to the uniqueness of the events of the past and cannot exclude a priori the possibility of events like the resurrection simply because they do not conform to his present experience” (Craig, Historical, 512, citing Resurrection and Historical Reason, 170).

For further argument against Hume, see Richard Swinburne, “Evidence for the Resurrection,” in The Resurrection: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Resurrection of Jesus (ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 197-198 and Stephen T. Davis, Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1993), 2-9.

40 Craig, Historical, 258. Craig seems to have omitted the citation on this argument; it appears to be an argument that Sherlock puts into the mouth of Woolston’s attorney somewhere between pages 51 and 65 of Tryal. Craig notes that this is Hume’s argument before Hume wrote it in 1748 (Ibid., 621, n. 427).

41 Ibid., 256-257, citing Thomas Woolston, A Sixth Discourse on the Miracles of Our Saviour (London: author, 1729), 5, 15-16, 19, 27.

42 Craig, Historical, 257.

43 Ibid., 258, citing Thomas Sherlock, The Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus (London: J. Roberts, 1729), 42-44.

44 Craig, Historical, 259, citing Sherlock, 74-80. Craig later points out, perhaps summarizing Ditton, that “had Jesus appeared publicly, we today should still be dependent on the same sort of evidence that we already have: written testimony. The fact that the Deists deny the multitude of public miracles performed by Jesus…shows that they would still reject the resurrection, even had it occurred publicly as well” (341).

45 Craig, Historical, 259-260, citing Sherlock, 81, 104.

46 Baird, 49-50.

47 Craig, Historical, 343, citing Annet, 49-71. Here I wonder if Annet came up with a better excuse. For all we know, the guard did tell others what happened.

48 Craig, Historical, 344.

49 Ibid., 344 and 638, n. 660.

50 Ibid., 344-345, citing Moss-Sherlock, 45-89. Annet was also answered by Samuel Chandler, The Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ Re-Examined (1744) and Gilbert West, Observations on the History and Evidence of the Resurrection (1747) (Ibid., 346-348). All three offered possible harmonizations of the resurrection discrepancies, but they came up with different solutions, and did not explain why each evangelist would omit so much of the story.

51 Ibid., 268, 283-285. Tindal’s book was translated into German in 1741.

52 Ibid., 277, citing Dictionaire philosophique, s.v. “Miracles.”

53 Ibid., 274, citing Rousseau, Lettres écrites de la montagne.

54 Ibid., 282, citing Pensées philosophiques, pensée 46.

55 Ibid., 626, n. 492.

56 Ibid., 282-283, citing Monod, De Pascal à Chateaubriand, p. 228.

57 Ibid., 283.

58 Ibid., 279-280.

59 Ibid., 322-323, citing Turretin-Vernet, Traité 3:23-36. The date is probably in the 1740s.

60 Ibid., 323-324, citing Vernet 3:37-75.

61 Ibid., 320, 330.

62 Ibid., 286.

63 Ibid., 287.

64 Ibid., 288, citing Die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion.

65 Baird, 171.

66 Craig, Historical, 371-372, giving no citation.

67 Ibid., 372-373, citing Talbert’s edition of Fragments, 172-200.

68 Ibid., 374, citing Reimarus, 96-104.

69 Baird, 171-172.

70 Craig, Historical, 289.

71 Baird, 173.

72 Craig, Historical, 295, and Baird, 130, 174-176.

73 Baird, 175.

74 Ibid. A similar question could be asked of the Jesus Seminar today: If Jesus was so innocuous, why was he killed?

75 Ibid., 176.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid. Michaelis used the minor discrepancies as evidence that there was no collusion (Baird, 130).

78 Craig notes, “Semler thus stands the traditional apologetic completely on its head” (Craig, Historical, 379, citing Semler, Beantwortung der Fragmente eines Ungenannten insbesondere vom Zweck Jesu und seiner Junger, 2nd ed., 1780, 264). Here Semler seems to believe that we can know what Jesus taught.

79 Craig, Historical, 380.

80 Craig lists a variety of rebuttals of “the apostles were deceived” theory – a smattering from Samuel Clarke, Gottfried Less, Ditton, and Sherlock. It seems that although some Deists offered this as a possibility, it had persuaded few and did not call for extensive reply (Ibid., 331).

81 Ibid., 338, citing Less, Wahrheit, 160-162.

82 Ibid., 338-338, citing Ditton, Discourse, 362-71.

83 Ibid., 263-265. Although Gibbon did not deal with the resurrection, Craig is attentive to his arguments because Craig thinks that the growth of the church is evidence for the resurrection (ibid., 544).

84 Ibid., 265, citing Gibbon, Modern Library edition, 1:432.

85 Ibid., 313, citing Paley, 1:3-15.

86 Ibid., 324-327, citing Paley, 1:178-319. Craig notes that Paley drew heavily on a 1730 work by Nathaniel Larder.

87 Ibid., 335, citing Paley, 1:106-41.

88 Ibid., 332. This shows why the “deceived” theory never got far off the ground – it was incredible that neither disciples nor Jewish leaders would fail to check the tomb. All the available evidence said that there was a tomb, and that it was empty. In the late 1700s, there was simply a choice between hoax and resurrection, and “hoax” was becoming harder to claim. The time was ripe for a new theory, which would come from Strauss.

89 Ibid., 335, citing Paley, 1:42-105.

90 Ibid., 336, quoting from Paley, 1:3276-328.

91 Ibid., 352-353.

92 This subjectivist approach was supported by Rousseau, Kant, and Schliermacher, and much earlier, by the Pietists (Ibid., 432, 435, 445).

93 Ibid., 392-393, citing Ausführung des Plan und Zwecks Jesu (1784-92).

94 Ibid., 396-397, citing Paulus, Philologisch-kritischer und historischer Kommentar über das neue Testament (1802), 3:842-852.

95 Ibid., 397-399,

96 Ibid., 398.

97 Baird, 219; also Gerald O’Collins, “Resurrection,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought (ed. Alister E. McGrath; Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 555.

98 Walter Bauer (1802) simply left the resurrection as a mystery (Baird, 191).

99 Craig, Historical, 402, citing Strauss, Herrmann Samuel Reimarus und seine Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes (1862), translated in Talbert’s edition of Reimarus’s Fragments, 276-277.

100 Ibid., 402, citing Strauss, A New Life of Jesus (1879), 1:412.

101 O’Collins, 555.

102 David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (ed. Peter C. Hodgson; trans. George Eliot; Ramsey, N.J.: Sigler, 1994), 742-744, and Craig, Historical, 525.

103 Baird, 307, citing Die evangelische Geschichte kritisch und philosophisch bearbeitet, 1.83.

104 Ibid., 381, citing (but not giving page numbers) The Life of Jesus and The Apostles.

105 William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1994), 271.

106 Baird, 239.

107 Ibid., 227, quoting from De Wette’s 1837 commentary on John.

108 Ibid., 334, citing Madges, The Core of Christian Faith, 129.

109 Ibid.

110 Craig, Historical, 472, citing The Credibility of the Evangelical History (London: Chapman, 1844), 52.

111 Ibid., 472-473.

112 Baird, 255, citing Harris, Strauss and His Theology, 87-88.

113 Ibid., 262, quoting Baur’s Church History, 1:42.

114 Ibid., 265, quoting Baur, Neutestamentliche Theologie (date?) 127.

115 Craig, Historical, 533, citing A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 188-191, and Julius Müller, The Theory of Myths (London: Chapman, 1844), 29. For six arguments against the myth theory, see Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1994), 189-195.

116 These include Rudolf Bultmann, John Dominic Crossan, Willi Marxsen, Sally McFague, and Norman Perrin (Davis et al., 6-7, 263 and Davis, 35-36, 39-40). Davis calls this “exegetical legerdemain” (Ibid., 40).

117 Baird, 388-389, citing History of Jesus, 6:361.

118 Ibid., 292, citing The History of Israel, VII: The Apostolic Age (1885), 68.

119 William P. Alston, “Biblical Criticism and the Resurrection,” in Davis et al., 156, summarizing from Reginald Fuller, Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 168-182.

120 Craig, Historical, 478, citing Ostergeschehen und Osterberichte, 4th ed. (Göttingen: Wandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970).

121 These three points are from Craig, Reasonable Faith, 287-288. For more on the corporeal nature of the resurrection, see Stephen T. Davis, “‘Seeing’ the Risen Jesus,” in Davis et al., 126-147.

122 Craig, Reasonable Faith, 272-277. See also William Lane Craig, “John Dominic Crossan,” 253-262, and Davis, Risen Indeed, 62-84. Of course, not everyone accepts that the tomb was empty. Crossan, Küng, Lindars, Perrin, Pesch, and Yarbro Collins do not (Davis et al., 13-15, 219, 273).

123 Craig, Reasonable Faith, 278-280. The latter theory was suggested by Kirsopp Lake in 1907. Writers occasionally revive a theory, such as Hugh Schonfeld did in The Passover Plot, but they convince few. Hick, Kaufmann, and Luedemann maintain a hallucination theory (Davis et al., 10, 29, 34, 231, 304).

124 Leon Morris, “Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” ISBE 4:153, quoting T. Peters, CBQ 35(1973): 481. See also Kreeft and Tacelli, 186-188.

125 Swinburne, 200, quoting The Sign of Four, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, 1 (Doubleday, 1930), 111. Swinburne quoted the maxim in his favor, but it seems to more easily fit the skeptic who says that resurrections are impossible, so even a weird theory is to be preferred.

126 Craig, Reasonable Faith, 289-292.

127 Craig, Historical, 513, citing Auferstehung TT4 (Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1970), 152-154.

128 Ibid., 513.

129 Alan G. Padgett writes, “If Jesus rose from the dead…it is not subject to natural-scientific explanation. Likewise, it is not subject to historical explanation. Historical science is incapable of making a theological judgement about whether or not God could or did raise Jesus” (“Advice for Religious Historians,” in Davis et al., 303).

In his history of NT interpretation, Baird commented on the resurrection of Jesus fairly often, as my footnotes show. In contrast, Neill and Wright do not even list it in the subject index! (Stephen Neill and Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)). Harrisville and Sundberg do not have a subject index, but a skim of the book did not turn up any comments about the resurrection (Roy A. Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture: Theology and Historical-Critical Method From Spinoza to Käsemann (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995)). This silence on a topic so fundamental to Christian faith is surprising, and may reflect the ambivalence the authors have about whether the resurrection can be studied historically.

130 Davis, 28, quoting from “The Resurrection: A Disagreement,” Theology 75 (April 1972): 516.

131 Morris, 153.

132 Swinburne makes this case in Davis et al., 202-207.

133 Schüssler Fiorenza writes, “As a Christian, I consider the conviction that God raised Jesus to be the most coherent historical account…. Others with different background assumptions will weigh the evidence and various warrants differently, and may not be convinced” (“The Resurrection of Jesus and Roman Catholic Fundamental Theology,” in Davis et al., 247).

134 Davis, 174, and C. Stephen Evans, Why Believe? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1996). “Most people adopt their belief about the resurrection on the basis of something other than the relevant historical evidence…. The nonbelievers are probably convinced of their position not primarily because of evidence or arguments in its favor but because it is entailed by the worldview that they accept” (Davis, 19, 17).