The main problem in proving the resurrection of Jesus happened is in how to prove an historical event. How would you prove, for example, what you had for breakfast this morning? It cannot easily be done, except through witnesses (who can lie or be mistaken) and documents (which can be forged).
But with the resurrection of Jesus, while we have witnesses and the documents they wrote, it is not so much what they say that convinces us of the historical fact of the resurrection, but the simple fact that such witnesses and documents exist that provide the greatest evidence for the resurrection.
Initially, this argument seems to make no sense. Just because someone writes a story about seeing a purple-polka-dotted elephant doesn’t mean that they actually saw one.
Precisely.
Many people claim that the early church invented stories about the resurrection of Jesus in order to support their new belief system and practices.
But that is exactly the point. Prior to the resurrection of Jesus, no Jewish person believed, first of all, that the Messiah would die and rise from the dead, and secondly, nobody except Jewish people believed that people rose from the dead, and even among Jews, they believed the resurrection would happen all at once, at the end of time, for all Jewish people. Though there are occasional stories within Judaism of someone actually rising from the dead, they still died later, and were awaiting the final resurrection.
So nobody believed that the Messiah would die, and therefore, nobody believed that He would rise. To talk about such things was almost exactly like telling a story about a purple-polka-dotted elephant. If the church really wanted to gain credibility among the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans for its new beliefs and practices, the last thing they would do is invent stories that sounded to everyone like fairy tales.
We cannot and must not say that the early church invented these stories about the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah in order to support and defend their new religion. Doing so would be like me telling you about a purple-polka-dotted elephant appearing in the sky as a way to prove to you that I had French Toast and coffee for breakfast this morning. Such a story might be creative, but hardly believable. If you want people to believe what you say, you do not begin by creating outlandish tales which everyone knows to be false.
And yet, that is exactly what the early church seems to have done, if was say that they invented the stories about Jesus. Therefore, the only other reason for them to write about the death and resurrection of Jesus is because they believed it was true. If they had really wanted to “invent” stories which declared Jesus as the Messiah, these are not the stories they would have invented.
Does this prove that the resurrection of Jesus actually happened? Not exactly. But it does prove that the early Christians who wrote about the resurrection of Jesus did not invent these stories. If they were inventing stories, these were not the sorts of stories they would have written.
In his book, The Challenge of Jesus, NT Wright puts it this way:
The only way forward for us as historians is to grasp the nettle, recognizing that we are of course here at the borders of language, of philosophy, of history and of theology. We had better learn to take seriously the witness of the entire early church, that Jesus of Nazareth was raised bodily to a new sort of life, three days after his execution (p. 148).
So if you believe that the resurrection did not happen, but that the early church was wrong, you cannot simply say they invented the stories. Another explanation is required. Some have tried, but the explanations get more outlandish and illogical than simply believing in the resurrection of Jesus.
For more on this line of reasoning, read The Challenge of Jesus by NT Wright, or the more detailed explanation in Jesus and the Victory of God.
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