About That Resurrection

At Easter Christians celebrate the resurrection of the man-god Jesus from the dead. The man whom the Romans executed for treason - claiming that he would establish a Jewish "kingdom of God" and thus implicitly overthrow the Roman rule of Palestine - supposedly came back to life after lying dead in a tomb for two nights (according to the Gospels) or three nights (according to Paul). And then he rose visibly into heaven, just like the Emperor Augustus had done (but Jesus didn't need a chariot like the Roman did).

What evidence is there that Jesus really came back to life? The evidence is pretty slim, and convincing only to Christians.

First of all, there is no contemporary evidence of the resurrection at all. None. That is, there is no documentation, no writing from the time of the supposed events that even mentions them. The only accounts are much, much later. Are they reliable? Are they even believable?

Paul was writing about 25 or 30 years after the crucifixion, and he was admittedly not there. He writes nothing else about Jesus' life or even his teachings. He only reports (based on what?) that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead. He says that 500 people saw the resurrected Jesus, but he gives no details of that, and nobody else reports this astonishing event. He claims that Jesus came to him in a vision, but like the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, he can't get the details right every time he tells it (in one version his companions heard the voice but saw nothing, in another they saw the vision but heard nothing).

None of the gospel writers were actually there. Whatever their identities (many scholars doubt that the real authors were the men whose names are attached to them), they were writing several decades after the events, and their accounts of those Easter week events are moving, but contradictory. Their purpose in writing is propaganda, and like all propagandists, they do not hesitate to embellish, invent, and sensationalize. Any attorney cross-examining them would tear their "testimony" to shreds. Conclusion: not reliable.

There is no doubt that five decades after Jesus' death there were many who believed that he had risen from the dead. Is that any kind of reliable evidence? Hardly. People - especially superstitious people (and that was certainly a superstitious age, when even well-educated people believed in magic and miracles) - believe all kinds of things for which there is no evidence. Peddlers of religion and quack medicine call this "faith" and if they can convince someone that "faith" is a good thing, they have found a buyer.

What are the facts? 1. People who are dead don't come back to life, except in fairy tales and legends (Osiris, Orpheus, Mithras, etc.). 2. People will believe any absurd thing, if you promise them something (like "you too can come back to life, if you just believe that Jesus did!"). Don't fall for it!