Jesus: dead or alive

Christianity stands or falls on one stupendous issue: did Jesus rise from the dead? The biblical record is crystal clear in saying that he did and many Evangelicals Now readers will be familiar with the evidence. However, there are four easily missed facts that give the resurrection story a further ring of truth.

The first is that there is no description of the actual event. This might seem to be a weak link, but is exactly the opposite. Had the apostles invented the resurrection, it is difficult to imagine them missing the opportunity of including an eyewitness account of it and decorating it with extravagant descriptions. Instead, they say nothing about it. Their silence is significant.

Grave clothes

Secondly, when Peter went into the tomb on the Sunday morning, ‘He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself’ (John 20.6-7). Moments later, John confirmed Peter’s findings. At first glance, describing how the grave-clothes were lying seems irrelevant, but this is not so. The word ‘lying’ (used twice of the linen cloths) translates a word commonly used of something done in a very orderly way, while the phrase about the face cloth being ‘folded up’ means something like ‘twirled about itself’. The grave-clothes looked like the empty chrysalis of a caterpillar’s cocoon. This would not have been the case if the swoon theory is true and Jesus had recovered from a near-death experience and wrestled out of grave-clothes smothered in substances which would have stuck firmly to the body. Nor can we imagine him stopping to tidy them up as if he were leaving his bedroom for a day’s work. Would grave robbers (Romans, Jews or disciples) increase the risk of being caught by taking time to tidy everything up before they rushed out?

Instead, the grave-clothes looked exactly as they would have done had they subsided when the body moved away. This was the immediate effect they had on John, who ‘saw and believed’ (John 20.5). He became the first person to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead, and what convinced him was not merely the absence of the body, but the way the grave-clothes were left.

Women witnesses

Thirdly, the resurrection story gains credibility from the fact that the first time Jesus appeared it was to a woman. This may seem irrelevant to those of us living in the modern Western world, but in the Middle East 2,000 years ago it was hugely significant as women counted for very little. As the modern writer Michael Green says, ‘They were nobodies; they were goods and chattels; they could in some circumstances be offered for sale; they could not bear witness in a court of law’. This may partly explain why, when Mary and the other women told the disciples they had seen Jesus, their story ‘seemed to them like an idle tale, and they did not believe them’ (Luke 24.11).

They reacted like the 2nd-century philosopher Celsus, who ridiculed the resurrection as something based on the word of a ‘hysterical female’. The last thing the disciples expected was that Jesus would rise from the dead and they were not going to take a woman’s word for it. If they had invented the resurrection story there is no way they would have given females such a leading role.

Fourthly, although all four gospels give an account of the resurrection it is impossible to arrange their accounts into exact chronological order. What seems like another weakness turns out to be exactly the opposite. If the four writers had invented the story, they would have made sure that their versions fitted perfectly together so that they all stayed ‘on message’. Instead, they are very different from each other, though unanimous that the grave was empty and that Jesus had been seen alive.

Witnesses in a court of law may all give truthful accounts of an incident as they saw it, yet their testimonies may vary considerably in the exact details without contradicting the essential truth of what happened. On the other hand, criminals may get together to concoct a story that would hold together when giving evidence in court. Newspaper reports of a sporting event can differ so much that I sometimes wonder when reading them whether the reporters saw the same game — but they all report the final score accurately. In the same way, the four major resurrection accounts differ in the details but not in the final fact: Jesus rose from the dead.

This is an extract from the booklet by John Blanchard, published by Evangelical Press (£1.50, ISBN 978-0-85234-697-6).

Jesus: dead or alive

An extract

Grave clothes

Women witnesses

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