The streets are buzzing with whispers. Newscasters and journalists are sprinting through the streets in search of the truth—or perhaps just a satisfying story for the day. Word around the street is that some great teacher who claimed to be God and as a consequence was gruesomely executed just a few days ago has appeared to his closest friends—alive. There have been a few murmurs that his chamber at the morgue was empty, but authorities around town have been saying that it was his friends who stole the body (somehow breaking in without a trace or getting caught by security cameras), and they started the rumors that he has miraculously resurrected after three days. There have been a number of witnesses across the city claiming to have seen him appear to them resurrected. Now that was all fiction, but a similar event to this happened approximately 2000 years ago with the man Jesus of Nazareth. The question lies in the significance of Jesus’ resurrection. After all, didn’t he raise a few people from the dead during his own lifetime? A few of his apostles are recorded accomplishing this feat in the Bible as well. Along with the advancements in medical processes, one could say that people come back from the dead quite frequently nowadays. So, what makes Jesus’ resurrection so special? In the book of 1 Corinthians, the author writes that, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.” Paul wrote this epistle to the church in Corinth to comfort and remind them of the imminent rapture of believers both dead and alive, and he makes a great point that is easy to skip over: without the concept of resurrection, specifically the resurrection of Jesus, every aspect of the Christian faith crumbles. Timothy Keller, a Christian author, writes, “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” There is a great deal of significance that lies within Jesus’ resurrection, but where is the proof? If someone refuses to believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, can any data be found to confirm that Jesus truly died on the cross and was alive again three days later? Various scholars have discovered that there are three main facts that support the event of Jesus’ resurrection historically and scientifically: his crucifixion, the empty tomb, and his appearances to people afterwards.
Surprisingly, several of the attacks against Jesus’ resurrection begin with his death. The Swoon Theory popularized the idea that he simply fainted while on the cross so that the soldiers would be fooled into taking him down and placing him in the tomb. Then, in the middle of the night, he rolled back the tomb and snuck away to appear to his disciples as a “risen” man. There are a number of issues with this theory. Jesus’ crucifixion and death are attested to by a series of sources throughout early history from a variety of time periods, cultures and backgrounds, including Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, Tacitus, an early second-century Roman historian, Lucian, a mid-second-century Greek satirist and historian, and Mara bar Serapion, a second to third-century prisoner writing to his son. Along with this collection of sources, a former Roman Catholic priest who disagrees with the resurrection of Jesus stated that Jesus’ death by crucifixion was “sure as anything historical can ever be.” and the Talmud, a central text of Judaism, confirmed that Jesus was crucified as well. In addition to all of these accounts, there is the matter of crucifixion itself. No one survived crucifixion. The entire process from beginning to end was grueling and full or misery. It started with a flogging, which would consist of thirty-nine lashes by a Roman soldier, or more if the soldier was in a good mood or not, with a whip made of braided leather with metal balls woven into it and pieces of sharp bone attached too. Victims at this point would either die or go into hypovolemic shock, which is to say that they are suffering from the consequences of losing too much blood. Soon after, the victim would be laid down and, with arms outstretched, nailed to the cross by his wrists with spikes from five inches to seven inches long so that the person would remain secure and not slide off when positioned upright. The positioning of the nail on the wrist just so happened to be where the median nerve runs, which would add an unbearable amount of agony to the pain already being felt. Next, they would place him upright, attach the other piece of the cross, and drive nails through his feet, which would ruin the nerves in his feet as well. Having been placed upright, his arms would be stretched and most likely both shoulders would be dislocated.