Okay, here we go. This is where I try to show that the historical evidence best favors the Resurrection. When accounting for the facts of Christianity, we have to account for several historical facts affirmed by the majority of new testament scholarship. I'll give supporting evidence for each fact, and rebut the positions offered from various critics of Christianity. I will not presuppose that the NT documents are inspired-in fact, I will assume they have errors (even though I don't believe that for a second).
A word about using New testament sources. When we evaluate information about any figure from antiquity, we use historical sources written at or around the time. Even if these sources are written by the followers/admirers of said figure, they still provide some evidence that historians have to separate from embellishment. Atheists seem to think that the New Testament documents, when assembled into an anthology called "The New Testament", magically loses all credibility. They say "it's biased!" and throw out the whole thing. The problem is that we don't do this for any figure of antiquity. Followers of a figure often write information about said figure...and practically every source on the planet for anything has biases. So, we must reason and argue about which facts can be considered historical. For the case I'm making, I will use facts supported by 90+% of Biblical scholarship (which is not universally Christian. There are "liberal" Christians-whatever the heck that means-as well as atheists, agnostics, and Jewish scholars). The one fact that is not supported by 90+% still is supported by 60%+ according to a survey of the literature by Gary Habermas (the empty tomb). In any case, I will provide argumentation supporting each fact.
Fact #1: Jesus was crucified.
This is not disputed by any historian teaching at any accredited university in the Western world. Just ask Bart Ehrman (see his book: "Did Jesus Exist?"). The reasons are several. In the first century, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, as well as the Torah itself all point to Messianic expectations of a triumphant Messiah, not one who would get killed by the enemy. It's nonsense to think that the disciples would invent the crucifixion, accuse the Jews of orchestrating it (crucifixion was a very public event), and then try to convince people that a crucified Messiah was the Savior of God's people. This fact is attested, obviously, by all our Gospels, as well as Tacitus and Josephus. The idea that Tacitus was reporting heresay is unsupported-he didn't hesitate to bash Christian "myths" when he could. The Josephus passage related to Jesus's crucifixion is considered by most scholars to have a historical core, while interpolations by Christians have been made.
Fact #2: Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea
First of all, Joseph of Arimathea is attested by all four Gospel sources. Why is this significant? First of all, Joseph was a member of the council that ordered Jesus's death. Why, if the church wanted to emphasize the point of Israel's guilt and punishment via the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in AD70, would they invent a pious Jewish man who was part of the religious elite? Secondly, Joseph is attested in all four Gospel sources. Remember, these sources are written in the style of ancient biographies-which means the authors intended to write history. We know Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source, since they copy some stuff verbatim (or they used the mysterious "Q" document...but whatever). However, in the reporting of the Passion narrative (the narrative of Jesus's betrayal, crucifixion, death and resurrection), they diverge in wording. That means that Mark, Matthew, and Luke all provide independent and multiple attestation to Joseph of Arimathea as a character in the narrative. Additionally, Paul indicates that he is aware of the burial in 1 Corinthians 15, in the creedal statement he provides.
Fact #3 The tomb was empty
The empty tomb is somewhat controversial. I'll only add some stuff here, but this article actually sufficiently explains my reasoning: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-historicity-of-the-empty-tomb-of-jesus
I'll add a few notes. Without an empty tomb, no one would have been convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead. Meetings with a recently deceased person was proof that the person was dead. See below.
Fact # 4 the disciples believed Jesus rose from the dead
To this, I will add a few notes. The Jewish view of Resurrection was corporate-that is, everyone would be raised from the dead at the end of the world. Apart from that, resurrection to new life (that is, new, bodily existence free from the decay of sin) didn't happen. The Greeks didn't believe in Resurrection at all. Why bring that up? Because unless the tomb was empty, the disciples never would have been convinced Jesus rose from the dead. This is because, if they had merely hallucinated, they never would have been convinced Jesus rose from the dead.
First of all, the creed in 1 Corinthians 15 indicates that the twelve saw Jesus, James saw Jesus, and 500 people saw Jesus after He had risen. As I demonstrate in the post "Can I prove the Resurrection?", to claim that they were flat out lying is absurd. They certainly genuinely believed they had seen Jesus-that is admitted by scholars from Bart Ehrman (rampant agnostic) to Gerd Luddeman (staunch German atheist new testament scholars). They claim that the disciples hallucinated.
Not only is this scientifically implausible (hallucinations are subjective and not shared...there's not one recorded instance of a shared hallucination), this is historically fanciful. People in the ancient world knew about seeing dead people after they had died. That's why necromancers existed. Homer records Greek views of the after life in the Odyssey. Namely, seeing someone after they had died was not proof that the person was alive again, but was actually proof that the person was dead. Thus, a vision of Jesus alone wouldn't have convinced the disciples that He had been risen-it would have convinced them that He was dead. They may have said "Jesus has been exalted with the martyrs and awaits resurrection"-but they never would've said He'd already been risen, because that wouldn't make sense given the views of the afterlife present at the time.
However, this also confirms the empty tomb. Meetings alone wouldn't have convinced them. The empty tomb alone wouldn't have convinced them either-grave robbery happened all the time. Only the empty tomb + meetings would have convinced the disciples. And not just any sort of meetings-they were so convinced that Jesus was risen from the dead, that they claimed God had initiated His new creation in Christ. That means that God had perfected Jesus's body, and had conquered the damage of sin. So how shall we explain these?
The Obvious Answer
The disciples did not lie about it, as that would be absurd. It's absurd to think they'd willingly go to their brutal deaths, or be beaten, persecuted, flogged, imprisoned for what they knew to be a lie. See my post "Can I prove the Resurrection" for more on that point. The disciples didn't suffer cognitive dissonance either. They didn't expect the Resurrection to happen, since no one was expecting a crucified, let alone risen, Messiah. The Christian belief is, as NT Wright says, a "radical mutation" of Jewish belief. It is new, and cannot be explained within the existing belief systems.
The obvious answer is so shocking that most people will refuse to go here. They will cling to radical fringe theories that scholars deride (i.e the disciples stole the body), and will ironically chide believers for questioning the consensus on evolution. They will try to deny Jesus's existence, rallying behind the likes of Richard Carrier and other unemployed historians with the title "PhD". They will do all they can to avoid the truth: the disciples and Paul really did see Jesus. He was thoroughly dead, and was thoroughly risen from the dead. And He stands ready to grant new life to all who come. He is the fountain of living water-LIVING water-and indeed, Jesus lives. So come, drink, and be satisfied in the love of the Lamb of God :)
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