Did Jesus rise from the dead?

Jesus really died, and the burial and tomb evidence give us a physical starting point. Now put the early proclamation, appearances, witnesses, and tomb evidence together and ask what best explains them.

The resurrection claim appeared early. We need an explanation that accounts for the appearances, the change in witnesses such as Paul, the bodily resurrection claim, and the tomb evidence together.

The resurrection stands at the center of Christianity. We should make the case with the evidence we actually have: early preaching, reported appearances, transformed witnesses, and the tomb tradition. Then we compare explanations.

The evidence and the explanatory comparison

We started by treating the early Christian writings as historical sources, not as inspired books we had to accept in advance. Now we can ask what best explains the evidence they preserve about Jesus.

One of the most important pieces is the tradition Paul records in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul says he is passing on something he had received: that Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared to Cephas, the Twelve, more than five hundred people, James, all the apostles, and finally Paul. The wording contains traditional material older than Paul's letter, which places the central claim within the first Christian generation. Paul also says in Galatians 1 that he spent time with Peter and met James in Jerusalem. We therefore have an early author who personally knew two people named in the appearance tradition, even though we do not have their own detailed written accounts.

The appearance reports concern individuals and groups. Paul names more than five hundred people in one report, although that is one early claim, not five hundred separately preserved testimonies. James, Jesus' brother, later became a leader in Jerusalem. Paul went from persecuting Christians to preaching their message after an experience he understood as an encounter with the risen Jesus. We have less direct evidence about James' earlier outlook than we do about Paul's opposition.

The earliest Christians specifically proclaimed bodily resurrection. As John Granger Cook argues, Paul's language would have meant that Jesus' body was no longer in the grave. That clarifies what the first Christians believed, though it does not independently prove the Gospel account of the empty-tomb discovery.

Now compare the alternatives. People sometimes report vivid experiences of loved ones who have died. A critic might suggest that some followers had such experiences, others shared their conviction, and the stories developed as they were passed on. That is more serious than the claim that everyone simply hallucinated. But the proposed sequence still needs evidence. Paul was not a grieving follower of Jesus. We also have the early bodily-resurrection proclamation, group appearance reports, and the tomb tradition. If the tomb was empty, the theory needs to account for the body. We cannot settle all that merely by showing that bereavement experiences happen.

Deliberate invention has a different problem: it must account for the convictions of people who accepted real costs for proclaiming the resurrection. Sincerity does not prove someone is right, but it is evidence against knowingly making the whole thing up. Moving a body, if the tomb was empty, might explain the missing body; it would not by itself explain the appearance reports.

I think the resurrection explains the evidence better than the alternatives, especially after the case we've made for God. That conclusion comes from comparing explanations, not from ruling out every natural possibility beforehand.

Bottom line: The resurrection is the best explanation when the early proclamation, appearances, tomb evidence, and transformed witnesses are considered together.

The case draws on early proclamation, appearance claims, the transformed convictions of witnesses, and the tomb evidence together. Compare the alternatives against the same collection of facts.