The Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus

Christianity rests on a claim about a particular man, executed in a particular city, and what happened to him a few days later. Paul put it bluntly to the church in Corinth: “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”¹ The Creed is just as concrete. It names a Roman governor: the Son of God was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered, was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Because the claim concerns a public execution and what followed it, it is one of the few religious claims that can be put to a historian. That means the Christian can point to evidence, and it also means the evidence has to be handled honestly, including the parts that are weaker than popular apologetics sometimes suggests.

Two questions should be kept apart. The first is what historians, using the ordinary tools of their trade, can establish about Jesus’ death and about what his followers said and did afterward. The second is what best explains those facts, and that depends partly on the evidence and partly on what a person believes is possible, above all whether there is a God who acts in the world. This article takes the first question as far as it will go and shows where the second begins.

In brief

Historians of early Christianity, whatever their beliefs, almost universally accept that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under Pontius Pilate. They also widely accept that his followers soon began proclaiming that God had raised him, and that individuals and groups among them had experiences they understood as appearances of the risen Jesus. The earliest evidence is a summary of the faith that Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15:3–8. Paul says he “received” it; it was already traditional when he wrote in the 50s and probably goes back to the 30s. Paul, once a persecutor, and James, the brother of the Lord, became leaders of the movement and are named among those to whom Jesus appeared. Two further claims, that Jesus was buried in a known tomb and that the tomb was found empty, have real support but are debated, and we present them that way. Natural explanations, especially visions arising from grief, can account for parts of the evidence, and the case for them is stronger than apologists have often admitted. In our judgment none explains the whole pattern as well as the explanation the first witnesses gave. Accepting that explanation depends finally on whether one allows that God can raise the dead. History cannot compel faith, but it does show that the Easter proclamation was early and tied to named witnesses.

Thesis: The historical evidence securely establishes that Jesus died by crucifixion and that his followers soon and sincerely proclaimed that he had been raised and had appeared to them; the resurrection is the explanation that accounts for this evidence most fully, though accepting it is a judgment of faith that history alone cannot force.

How a historian approaches Easter

A historian of the ancient world works with probabilities, not proofs. Our sources for Jesus are mostly texts written by people who believed in him: Paul’s letters, the earliest Christian writings we have, and the four Gospels. Each was written to teach or persuade, so each must be read critically, as historians read any ancient text with a point of view.

One influential approach, associated above all with Gary Habermas, begins only with facts that scholars of many convictions accept and then asks which explanation accounts for them best. Habermas supports its starting points with a survey of “well over 2000 sources” on the resurrection published from 1975 onward in German, French and English.² Michael Licona, in his 2010 study of historical method, narrowed the starting point to three facts he called “historical bedrock”: Jesus died by crucifixion; very shortly afterward his disciples had experiences that led them to believe and proclaim that he had been raised and had appeared to them; and within a few years Paul converted after an experience he took to be an appearance of the risen Jesus. Licona left James’s conversion and the empty tomb out of that list because, though he thought both well evidenced, they lack the same breadth of agreement.³

That restraint is worth imitating, because claims about “most scholars” are easy to inflate. Where this article calls a point widely accepted, it means that scholars of very different convictions, including people who do not believe Jesus rose, accept it, and we name some of them so readers can check.

What historians across the spectrum accept

Jesus died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate

All four Gospels place Jesus’ execution under Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judea, and Paul’s letters take the crucifixion for granted. The Roman historian Tacitus, describing how Nero blamed the Christians for the great fire at Rome, explains who they were: “Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.”⁴ Tacitus was no friend of the movement; in the same passage he calls it “a most mischievous superstition.” Josephus also mentions Jesus’ condemnation by Pilate. The passage as we have it contains Christian additions; most scholars think Josephus wrote a shorter, neutral notice that a copyist expanded, while a minority think the whole passage was inserted later.⁵ Our guide Jesus Outside the Bible examines these witnesses one by one.

The date is less certain than the event. Many scholars have favored AD 30 and a sizeable minority AD 33; Helen Bond argues that we can say only that Jesus died around Passover sometime between AD 29 and 34.⁶ The core claim does not depend on the date: {{very-strong: Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on the authority of Pontius Pilate.}}

Muslims hold a different view. Qur’an 4:157 says of Jesus that “they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them.”⁷ We respect the seriousness of that conviction. As a matter of historical method, though, it rests on a text from about six centuries after the event, and historians, believing and unbelieving alike, treat the crucifixion as one of the most secure facts about Jesus. We discuss this at length in Was Jesus Really Crucified?

The resurrection was proclaimed very early

The most important single piece of evidence is a short summary of the faith that Paul reminds the Corinthians he had taught them:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Corinthians 15:3–8)

“Delivered” and “received” are the ordinary words for handing on a tradition. Paul is reminding his readers of the gospel “which you received, in which you stand” (15:1), a message he had passed on to them and had himself received before that. The letter was written from Ephesus (16:8), most likely in the mid-50s, so the formula is older than the letter.⁸

How much older? Paul says that three years after his call he “went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days,” and also saw “James the Lord’s brother.”⁹ Apart from Paul himself, Cephas (Peter) and James are the only individuals named in the list of appearances. It is reasonable to think Paul learned at least this form of the tradition in his earliest years as a believer, in Damascus or during that visit, which would place it in the 30s; many scholars agree. James D. G. Dunn went further, judging that it took shape as tradition within months of Jesus’ death, and Gerd Lüdemann, who did not believe Jesus rose, dated “all the elements in the tradition” to “the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus.”¹⁰ Others are more cautious. Scholars disagree about where the quoted formula ends, and Bart Ehrman warns that calling a passage pre-Pauline “does not mean that it was something that was written (or circulated) before Paul converted to Christianity.”¹¹ Paul does not say when he received it, so every date is an inference, as our study of how early Paul’s resurrection creed is explains. The cautious conclusion is enough: {{strong: The resurrection formula Paul quotes was established tradition when he received it, very probably within a few years of the crucifixion.}}

Paul also insists that the Jerusalem apostles preached the same message: “Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed” (15:11). Paul knew Peter and James personally and was willing to oppose Peter “to his face” (Galatians 2:11), so this claim of a shared message carries weight. The resurrection was not a Pauline addition to a movement that had not believed it.

The disciples had experiences they took to be appearances

The formula names Cephas, the Twelve, more than five hundred, James, “all the apostles” and Paul; the Gospels add appearances to women and to the disciples in Jerusalem and Galilee. Historians across the spectrum accept the core of this in some form.

E. P. Sanders, a leading historian of ancient Judaism and of Jesus, judged it a fact that Jesus’ followers, and later Paul, had resurrection experiences, while saying he did not know what reality gave rise to them.¹² Bart Ehrman, an agnostic, says: “What leads to belief is that some of the followers of Jesus have visions of him afterwards.”¹³ Gerd Lüdemann, who rejected the resurrection outright, built his account on visions experienced by Peter, the other disciples and Paul.¹⁴ Habermas summarizes that “contemporary scholars widely conclude that after his death, Jesus’ followers at least thought that they had seen appearances of the risen Jesus.”¹⁵ The disagreement is over what those experiences were.

{{very-strong: Soon after Jesus’ death, several of his followers, individually and in groups, had experiences they sincerely understood as appearances of the risen Jesus.}} One item in the list needs a caution. No Gospel narrates the appearance to “more than five hundred,” and we cannot check it independently. Paul’s remark that most were still alive may have invited inquiry, but the claim, though early, is not corroborated.

Paul, the persecutor, became an apostle

Paul does not hide his past: “you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.” He attributes his change to God, who “was pleased to reveal his Son to me,” and he places himself last in the list of those to whom the risen Christ appeared, “as to one untimely born.”¹⁶

Paul matters to the historian for two reasons. His letters give us his own testimony rather than a later report. And he was no grieving follower primed to see Jesus again; he was an opponent of the movement. A conversion does not prove that the convert read his experience correctly, and skeptics such as Lüdemann have offered psychological explanations. Any account of Christian origins still has to explain how a determined persecutor became one of the movement’s leading missionaries and why he credited the change to an appearance of Jesus. Our article on Paul and the earliest Christian witness looks at his letters more closely.

James, the brother of the Lord

James appears in the list of appearances (15:7), Paul met him in Jerusalem, and he became a leading figure of the Jerusalem church. Josephus records that around AD 62 the high priest Ananus brought before the Sanhedrin “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James,” accused him and others of breaking the law, and had them stoned.¹⁷

A familiar apologetic argument says that James did not believe in his brother during the ministry and was won over by a resurrection appearance. The texts are these. Mark reports that Jesus’ family “went out to seize him, for people were saying, ‘He is beside himself’” (Mark 3:21), and that when his mother and brothers came asking for him, Jesus said, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother” (3:31–35). John says plainly, “even his brothers did not believe in him” (John 7:5), and Mark names James first among the brothers (6:3). After the resurrection the brothers are among the believers (Acts 1:14). No text narrates James’s conversion.

The Church’s tradition holds two strands. Saint John Chrysostom read John 7:5 as including James: of the brothers who spoke those words, “one became first Bishop of Jerusalem, the blessed James,” though at the time “they profited nothing.” Another strand honors James as righteous from his youth: Hegesippus, quoted by Eusebius, says he “was holy from his mother’s womb,” and the life of Saint James published by the Orthodox Church in America says that when Christ began to preach, James “believed in Christ and became His Apostle.”¹⁸

Scholars also differ. Habermas reports that most recent scholars, including many skeptical ones, think an appearance of the risen Jesus converted James from unbelief, and Reginald Fuller wrote that without the record of that appearance “we should have to invent one in order to account for his post-resurrection conversion and rapid advance.” John Painter questions that reading, noting that John 7 places the brothers in Jesus’ retinue.¹⁹ A post-Easter conversion is a reasonable and widely held inference, but it remains an inference. What is secure is that James, the Lord’s brother, led the Jerusalem church, was named in the earliest list of appearances, and was put to death in Jerusalem, a death the Church remembers as martyrdom.

What is genuinely debated: the burial and the empty tomb

Many popular presentations list the empty tomb beside the crucifixion as an agreed fact. That goes beyond the evidence. The burial in a known tomb and the empty tomb have good arguments and many scholarly supporters, and also able critics.

The figure most often quoted comes from Habermas, who reported that “approximately 75% of the surveyed scholars accept one or more arguments for the historicity of the empty tomb,” while “the remaining 25% accept one or more arguments against” the early church’s knowledge of one.²⁰ Habermas reads this as a majority for the empty tomb, but the number needs care. It describes authors of publications on the resurrection since 1975, not a random sample of historians. Accepting “one or more arguments for” a conclusion is not quite the same as holding it firmly. And the article neither explains how authors were chosen and classified nor publishes the list, so others cannot check the count. It shows that most of that literature leans toward the empty tomb and a substantial minority does not, and it should not be cited for more.

The case against a known burial

John Dominic Crossan argued that Jesus’ body probably received no proper burial, at most a shallow grave where scavenging dogs could reach it, and he doubted that the burial by Joseph of Arimathea happened as the Gospels describe.²¹ Ehrman reached a similar view while writing How Jesus Became God (2014). “I actually changed my views about this question about whether there was an empty tomb,” he has said, after finding that ancient references to crucifixion repeatedly speak of victims left on the cross “to rot away and to be eaten by scavengers.”²² On this view, denial of burial was part of the punishment, Pilate had little reason to make an exception for a man executed under the charge “The King of the Jews” (Mark 15:26), and the story of a council member who buried Jesus developed later.

The case for a known burial

Jewish law required that a hanged man’s “body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day” (Deuteronomy 21:23). Josephus, describing atrocities in the Jewish War, contrasts them with his people’s normal care for the dead: Jews “took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun.”²³ Defenders of the burial account argue that in peacetime Jerusalem, at Passover, a Roman prefect had practical reasons to allow such customs.

Archaeology adds one piece of physical evidence: in 1968 the bones of a crucified man of the Roman period were found in an ossuary in a Jewish tomb at Giv‘at ha-Mivtar in Jerusalem, his heel bone still pierced by an iron nail.²⁴ At least one victim of crucifixion near Jerusalem received burial in a tomb rather than being left to the birds. It is only one case, and skeptics rightly reply that it shows exceptions were possible, not that Jesus received one.

The burial also appears in the early formula (“that he was buried”), and Mark names the man responsible: Joseph of Arimathea, “a respected member of the council” (Mark 15:43). Christians had little motive to invent a member of the council that handed Jesus over as the man who honored him. Weighing both sides: {{moderate: Jesus was buried in a tomb whose location was known to his followers.}}

The empty tomb

All four Gospels report that women found the tomb empty early on the first day of the week. Mark, usually regarded as the earliest Gospel, tells it with restraint: the women find the stone rolled back, hear a young man say “He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him,” and flee in fear (Mark 16:1–8).

Four arguments are commonly offered for the report. First, the first witnesses are women. Josephus, summarizing Jewish law, writes: “let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex.”²⁵ A story invented to persuade would hardly rest its key discovery on witnesses whose word carried so little weight in at least some settings. The argument has limits, since the Gospels are not courtroom depositions, but many careful scholars find it weighty.

Second, the movement proclaimed the resurrection in Jerusalem, where Jesus was executed and buried. A bodily resurrection would have been a hard message to sustain there if the body lay in a known grave. This depends, of course, on the burial in a known tomb.

Third, the earliest known Jewish response to the Christian claim explained an empty tomb rather than pointing to an occupied one. Matthew reports that the guards were paid to say, “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep,” adding that “this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.” Around the middle of the second century Justin Martyr reports the same charge: that Jesus’ “disciples stole him by night from the tomb.”²⁶ Both are Christian sources describing opponents, which limits their value, but neither knows of any rival claim that the body was still in its grave.

Fourth, for a first-century Jew the formula’s sequence of “buried” and “raised” would naturally mean that the body did not stay in the grave. N. T. Wright argues that the early Christians’ belief presupposed both an empty tomb and meetings with the risen Jesus, and concludes that “the combination of empty tomb and appearances of the living Jesus forms a set of circumstances which is itself both necessary and sufficient for the rise of early Christian belief.”²⁷

The case on the other side is also real. Paul never mentions the empty tomb explicitly. In some of the most ancient manuscripts Mark’s Gospel ends at 16:8, with the women saying “nothing to any one, for they were afraid.”²⁸ The Gospel accounts differ in details such as the number of women and of angels. And if Jesus was not buried in a known tomb, the empty-tomb story cannot be history. Christians answer that brief summaries of the faith rarely narrate events, that Paul’s whole argument in 1 Corinthians 15 concerns the raising of a body, and that independent retellings usually differ in secondary details. The verdict stands: {{debated: The tomb in which Jesus was buried was found empty.}} Most of the scholarly literature leans toward that conclusion. It is not a consensus and should not be presented as one.

What the first Christians meant by “resurrection”

It matters that the first Christians used the word resurrection at all. In the Jewish world of the time, those who hoped for resurrection generally expected the dead, or at least the righteous, to be raised together at the end of the age. A great teacher might be honored after death, or his spirit thought to be with God. The first Christians announced something else: one man raised ahead of everyone, in the middle of history, with a body transformed rather than simply revived. Wright’s major study argues that this was a striking modification of Jewish hope that itself requires an explanation.²⁹

Paul speaks of a body “sown a physical body” and “raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44), and the Christians after him insisted that the risen Lord was no ghost. Ignatius of Antioch, early in the second century, wrote: “For I know that after His resurrection also He was still possessed of flesh, and I believe that He is so now.”³⁰ We explain why the Church confesses a bodily resurrection in Why Do Christians Believe in Bodily Resurrection?

The alternative explanations, at their strongest

A fair case has to meet the best version of each alternative. Each of the following has been held by serious people, and each explains some part of the evidence.

Grief, visions and hallucinations

The objection. Experiences of the dead are common among the bereaved. In a 1971 study in the British Medical Journal, W. Dewi Rees interviewed 293 widowed people in mid-Wales and found that almost half had experienced hallucinations or illusions of their dead spouse.³¹ Jesus’ followers were grieving, and Peter had denied him. On this view Peter had a vision, the experience spread through the group, and Paul’s later vision grew out of his own inner conflict. Lüdemann explains the appearances in roughly this way. Ehrman leaves open what caused the disciples’ visions, while noting that non-Christians explain them as hallucinations and that visions of dead loved ones are common. Dale Allison of Princeton Theological Seminary, a New Testament scholar who writes as a Christian, has gathered many reports of apparitions, including ones experienced by groups, and his 2021 book adds comparative material such as the Marian apparitions reported at Zeitoun in Egypt.³² His work shows that the old apologetic claim that hallucinations can never be shared is too simple.

Response. We accept that point; here the evidence weakens a familiar argument. Still, visions account for the experiences and leave the disciples’ conclusion unexplained. Bereaved people who sense or see a loved one do not conclude that the dead have been bodily raised and that the end of the age has begun. Allison himself writes: “Typical encounters with the recently deceased do not issue in claims about an empty tomb, nor do they lead to the founding of a new religion.”³³ The theory also has to stretch to cover Paul, who was trying to destroy Jesus’ followers rather than mourning him, and the range of experiences in 1 Corinthians 15, involving individuals and groups at different times and places. The theories also interlock. If the tomb was empty, visions alone do not explain the evidence. If there was no known tomb, the vision hypothesis becomes the strongest natural explanation available, which is why able scholars hold it.

Legend

The objection. The Gospels were written decades after the events. Their resurrection accounts differ, and some details, such as the guard at the tomb in Matthew, appear in only one Gospel. Stories about revered figures grow in the telling.

Response. Legendary growth can explain how details developed. It cannot explain how the belief began. The claim that Jesus was raised and appeared to Cephas, the Twelve and James was fixed tradition when Paul received it, and Paul knew two of the people named. A legend arising a generation later does not fit that timetable. Christians need not prove every detail of every Gospel account to hold that the core proclamation is early and rooted in eyewitnesses. The more radical theory that Jesus never existed is examined in Did Jesus Really Exist?

Theft or deliberate fraud

The objection. The charge that the disciples stole the body is the oldest alternative on record, and people sometimes lie for a cause.

Response. There is no evidence for theft beyond the charge itself. The theory explains an empty tomb but neither Paul’s experience nor James’s. It also requires the first witnesses to have preached what they knew to be false while accepting hardship for it. Paul writes of being “in peril every hour” (1 Corinthians 15:30), and Josephus records that James was stoned. Sincerity does not prove a belief true, since people die for mistaken convictions, but it counts heavily against conscious fraud.

Jesus survived the cross

The objection. Mark records that Pilate “wondered if he were already dead” (Mark 15:44), as though Jesus died surprisingly quickly. Perhaps he was taken down unconscious, revived in the tomb, and was later seen by his followers.

Response. In the same passage Pilate confirms the death with the centurion before releasing the body (15:44–45). The decisive objection came in the nineteenth century from David Friedrich Strauss, a skeptic who rejected the resurrection himself: “It is impossible that a being who had stolen half-dead out of the sepulchre, who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, … could have given to the disciples the impression that he was a Conqueror over death and the grave.”³⁴ A half-dead survivor might inspire relief. He would not inspire the proclamation that death had been defeated.

The women went to the wrong tomb

The objection. Kirsopp Lake suggested in 1907 that the women, in a neighborhood full of rock-cut tombs and perhaps having watched the burial from a distance, may not have been sure which tomb was Jesus’. “The possibility, therefore, that they came to the wrong tomb is to be reckoned with,” he wrote.³⁵

Response. Mark says that the women “saw where he was laid” (15:47). The theory explains an empty tomb but not a single appearance, and once the proclamation began, anyone who knew the right tomb, including Joseph of Arimathea if the burial account is accepted, could have corrected the mistake.

The objection from method

The objection. The most serious objection is a principle about what history can do. Ehrman states it clearly: “Historians acting as historians, whether they’re believers or non-believers, as historians they simply cannot say Jesus was probably raised by God from the dead.”³⁶ On this view a miracle is by definition the least likely explanation of any event, and to say that God acted requires a theological belief that history cannot supply.

Response. Licona replies that a historian may recognize a miracle when an event is extremely unlikely to have happened naturally and occurs in a context charged with religious significance, as the resurrection does.³⁷ We think each side has hold of something true. Ehrman is right that no historical method can prove that God acted; the judgment that God raised Jesus is finally a judgment about God. Licona is right that a method which rules out God in advance has not stayed neutral, because it has answered the question before looking at the evidence. Our article Can Miracles Really Happen? takes up that question directly.

What a historian can and cannot conclude

History can establish that Jesus was crucified, that his followers proclaimed his resurrection very early, that they named witnesses who were alive and known in the churches, and that a former persecutor became a leader of the movement. It cannot place a camera in the tomb. The step from “these are the facts” to “God raised Jesus from the dead” is taken by a person who has weighed the evidence, asked whether God exists and acts, and decided whom to trust. For a one-page summary for study or discussion, see our Resurrection Evidence Cheat Sheet.

What we can say confidently

• Jesus of Nazareth died by Roman crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, probably between AD 29 and 34.
• Paul passed on a summary of the faith, already traditional when he received it and very probably dating from the 30s, that Christ died, was buried, was raised on the third day, and appeared to Cephas, the Twelve, James and others.
• Soon after Jesus’ death, several of his followers, individually and in groups, had experiences they sincerely took to be appearances of the risen Jesus.
• Paul, a persecutor of the Church, became an apostle and attributed the change to an appearance of the risen Christ.
• James, the Lord’s brother, led the Jerusalem church, was named in the earliest list of appearances, and was stoned in Jerusalem around AD 62.
• The first Christians proclaimed a bodily resurrection, an unexpected development of Jewish hope.

What remains disputed

• Whether Jesus was buried in a tomb whose location his followers knew.
• Whether that tomb was found empty. Most of the published literature leans toward yes; a substantial minority disagrees.
• Exactly how early the 1 Corinthians 15 formula is. Estimates run from within months (Dunn) to within a few years, and some scholars doubt that such precision is possible.
• Whether James was an unbeliever during Jesus’ ministry. John 7:5 says the brothers did not believe, and many scholars, with Saint John Chrysostom, include James; another strand of tradition remembers him as righteous from his youth and a believer from the start of Christ’s preaching.
• What the appearance to “more than five hundred” was, since no other source describes it.
• Whether grief visions, including shared ones, can explain the appearances.
• Whether historians, working as historians, can ever conclude that a miracle occurred.

Conclusion: Christ is risen from the dead

The Church’s proclamation did not grow slowly out of pious reflection. It arose among people whose teacher had just been executed and who soon insisted that they had seen him alive, and it named its witnesses at real cost to those who made it. Evidence can make the question unavoidable, but it cannot answer it for us.

The Orthodox Church has never presented the Resurrection only as the conclusion of an argument. It sings it. At Pascha the faithful repeat, again and again, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!”³⁸ The Church confesses the Resurrection as the victory of the incarnate Son over death itself, the healing of a humanity subject to corruption, and the first fruits of the resurrection promised to all. Saint Athanasius pointed to the changed lives of ordinary Christians as a sign of that victory: if “by the sign of the Cross, and by faith in Christ, death is trampled down,” then it is Christ himself “that has displayed trophies and triumphs over death.”³⁹

On Paschal night the Church reads the sermon attributed to Saint John Chrysostom, which proclaims near its close: “Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.”⁴⁰ That is the faith the apostles handed on and the Church still confesses. The historian can bring us to the edge of the tomb and to the testimony of those who said they met the risen Lord. The Church invites us further, to meet him in the Eucharist and in the life of his Body, the Church. For anyone still weighing the question, the evidence deserves an honest hearing, and the One to whom it points has promised, “seek, and you will find” (Matthew 7:7).

Notes

1. 1 Corinthians 15:14. Bible quotations in this article are from the Revised Standard Version (RSV). ↩
2. Gary R. Habermas, “Experiences of the Risen Jesus: The Foundational Historical Issue in the Early Proclamation of the Resurrection,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 45, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 288–297, introduction. ↩
3. Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), chapter 4. Licona follows Habermas in this list. ↩
4. Tacitus, Annals 15.44, trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. ↩
5. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.63–64 (18.3.3), trans. William Whiston. The surviving text says “He was [the] Christ” and that “he appeared to them alive again the third day,” statements that Josephus, who was not a Christian, is unlikely to have written in this form; how much of the rest is original is debated. ↩
6. Helen K. Bond, “Dating the Death of Jesus: Memory and the Religious Imagination,” New Testament Studies 59, no. 4 (2013): 461–475. ↩
7. Qur’an 4:157, Saheeh International translation, as given at Quran.com. ↩
8. 1 Corinthians 15:1–8; 16:8. The letter is commonly dated to the early or mid-50s. ↩
9. Galatians 1:18–19. ↩
10. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, Christianity in the Making 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 855; we paraphrase rather than quote because we have not checked the printed page ourselves. Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus (1994), in his discussion of the formula. Habermas, “Experiences of the Risen Jesus,” describes Paul’s first Jerusalem visit (Galatians 1:18–19) as the most popular view of when he received it. ↩
11. Bart D. Ehrman, “The Earliest Understanding of Christ? The Hint in Paul’s Letter to the Romans,” The Bart Ehrman Blog, posted March 26, 2025. ↩
12. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1993), epilogue. We paraphrase rather than quote because we have not checked the printed page ourselves. ↩
13. Bart D. Ehrman, interview with Terry Gross, “If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One?” Fresh Air, NPR, April 7, 2014 (transcript), discussing his How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014). ↩
14. Gerd Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology, trans. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994). Lüdemann argues that Easter faith arose from visions of Peter, the disciples and Paul and originally had nothing to do with the empty tomb. ↩
15. Habermas, “Experiences of the Risen Jesus,” introduction. ↩
16. Galatians 1:13, 15–16; 1 Corinthians 15:8–9. ↩
17. Josephus, Antiquities 20.200 (20.9.1), trans. Whiston. The date follows from Josephus’s setting of the trial between the death of the governor Festus and the arrival of Albinus. ↩
18. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John 48.2 (on John 7:5), trans. Charles Marriott, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 14. Hegesippus, quoted in Eusebius, Church History 2.23.5, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 1. Orthodox Church in America, “Apostle James, the Brother of the Lord” (commemorated October 23), Lives of the Saints. The same life gives the Church’s traditional understanding of the title “brother of the Lord”: James was a son of Joseph the Betrothed by an earlier marriage. ↩
19. Habermas, “Experiences of the Risen Jesus,” section “The Disciples’ Experiences of the Risen Jesus”; Reginald H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 37; John Painter, Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition, new ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004; first published 1997), chapter “The Gospels: James and the Family of Jesus,” on John 7:3–5. Licona leaves James’s conversion out of his “historical bedrock” for lack of the same breadth of agreement (see note 3). ↩
20. Habermas, “Experiences of the Risen Jesus,” section “The Disciples’ Experiences of the Risen Jesus.” ↩
21. John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), chapter 6, “The Dogs Beneath the Cross.” ↩
22. Ehrman, Fresh Air interview, April 7, 2014; the argument is set out in How Jesus Became God. ↩
23. Deuteronomy 21:22–23; Josephus, The Jewish War 4.317 (4.5.2), trans. Whiston. ↩
24. Joseph Zias and Eliezer Sekeles, “The Crucified Man from Giv‘at ha-Mivtar: A Reappraisal,” Israel Exploration Journal 35, no. 1 (1985): 22–27. The reappraisal corrected several details of the original 1970 report but not the fact of crucifixion or burial. ↩
25. Josephus, Antiquities 4.219 (4.8.15), trans. Whiston. ↩
26. Matthew 28:13, 15; Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 108, trans. Marcus Dods and George Reith, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1. ↩
27. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 3 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003). ↩
28. Mark 16:8. The RSV notes that “some of the most ancient authorities bring the book to a close at the end of verse 8,” while “in most authorities verses 9–20 follow immediately after verse 8.” The Orthodox Church reads the longer ending as Scripture; Mark 16:9–20 is the third of the eleven Resurrection Gospels read at Sunday Matins (see the list compiled by John Sanidopoulos). The point here concerns only what historians treat as the earliest form of the text. ↩
29. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God; this is the book’s central argument. ↩
30. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans 3, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1. ↩
31. W. Dewi Rees, “The Hallucinations of Widowhood,” British Medical Journal 4, no. 5778 (October 2, 1971): 37–41. The sample was 227 widows and 66 widowers. ↩
32. Dale C. Allison Jr., Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (New York: T&T Clark, 2005); Dale C. Allison Jr., The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (London: T&T Clark, 2021). ↩
33. Allison, Resurrecting Jesus (2005). ↩
34. David Friedrich Strauss, A New Life of Jesus, authorized translation, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (London: Williams and Norgate, 1879), 412. ↩
35. Kirsopp Lake, The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (London: Williams & Norgate; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907), 250–251. ↩
36. Ehrman, Fresh Air interview, April 7, 2014. ↩
37. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, chapter 2. ↩
38. The Paschal Troparion, as given by the Orthodox Church in America, “Selected Liturgical Hymns.” ↩
39. Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word 29.1, trans. Archibald Robertson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 4; compare chapter 27. ↩
40. The Paschal (Catechetical) Sermon of Saint John Chrysostom, read at Paschal Matins; English text as published by the Orthodox Church in America. ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version.
• Josephus, Flavius. Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War. Translated by William Whiston.
• Justin Martyr. Dialogue with Trypho. Translated by Marcus Dods and George Reith. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1.
• Tacitus. The Annals. Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Athanasius of Alexandria. On the Incarnation of the Word. Translated by Archibald Robertson. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 4.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. Church History (quoting Hegesippus). Translated by Arthur Cushman McGiffert. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 1.
• Ignatius of Antioch. Epistle to the Smyrnaeans. Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1.
• John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of John. Translated by Charles Marriott. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 14.
• John Chrysostom (attributed). The Paschal (Catechetical) Sermon. Orthodox Church in America, oca.org.
• Orthodox Church in America. “Selected Liturgical Hymns” (the Paschal Troparion). oca.org.
• Orthodox Church in America. “Apostle James, the Brother of the Lord.” Lives of the Saints, October 23. oca.org.
• Sanidopoulos, John. “The Eleven Sunday Matins Resurrection Eothina Gospels.” Orthodox Christianity Then and Now (blog), November 2019.

Other scholarship

• Allison, Dale C., Jr. Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters. New York: T&T Clark, 2005.
• Allison, Dale C., Jr. The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History. London: T&T Clark, 2021.
• Bond, Helen K. “Dating the Death of Jesus: Memory and the Religious Imagination.” New Testament Studies 59, no. 4 (2013): 461–475. doi:10.1017/S0028688513000131.
• Dunn, James D. G. Jesus Remembered. Christianity in the Making 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
• Fuller, Reginald H. The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives. New York: Macmillan, 1971.
• Habermas, Gary R. “Experiences of the Risen Jesus: The Foundational Historical Issue in the Early Proclamation of the Resurrection.” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 45, no. 3 (2006): 288–297.
• Licona, Michael R. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010.
• Painter, John. Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition. New ed. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004. First published 1997.
• Rees, W. Dewi. “The Hallucinations of Widowhood.” British Medical Journal 4, no. 5778 (1971): 37–41. doi:10.1136/bmj.4.5778.37.
• Sanders, E. P. The Historical Figure of Jesus. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1993.
• Wright, N. T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God 3. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.
• Zias, Joseph, and Eliezer Sekeles. “The Crucified Man from Giv‘at ha-Mivtar: A Reappraisal.” Israel Exploration Journal 35, no. 1 (1985): 22–27.

Skeptical and other-tradition sources

• Crossan, John Dominic. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994.
• Ehrman, Bart D. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. New York: HarperOne, 2014. Quotations in this article come from his interview about the book with Terry Gross, “If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One?” Fresh Air, NPR, April 7, 2014.
• Ehrman, Bart D. “The Earliest Understanding of Christ? The Hint in Paul’s Letter to the Romans.” The Bart Ehrman Blog, March 26, 2025. ehrmanblog.org.
• Lake, Kirsopp. The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. London: Williams & Norgate; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907.
• Lüdemann, Gerd. The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology. Translated by John Bowden. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994.
• Strauss, David Friedrich. A New Life of Jesus. Authorized translation. 2nd ed. 2 vols. London: Williams and Norgate, 1879.
• The Qur’an. Saheeh International translation. Quran.com.