Transcription
I'd like to summarize the evidence using four "E's" that begin with the letter E, and I'll go through it quickly. But if you have any follow-ups or questions, I can elaborate on any of them.
The first "E" stands for execution. Um, was Jesus dead after being crucified? And the answer is absolutely yes. As this was said in the film, there is no record anywhere of anybody ever surviving a full Roman crucifixion.
Even the Journal of the American Medical Association, which is a secular peer-reviewed scientific medical journal, carried an investigation into the medical and historical evidence for the death of Jesus and said clearly—there's a quote—"clearly the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead even before the wound to his side was inflicted."
You could go to an atheist New Testament scholar like Garrett Ludeman, formerly of Vanderbilt, and he'll tell you that Jesus' death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable. One of the reasons I found that it's so universally agreed by historians that he was dead after being crucified is that when you study ancient history, we're lucky if we have one or two sources to confirm a fact.
But for the death of Jesus, we not only have multiple early first-century accounts in the documents of the New Testament, we've also got five extra sources outside the Bible confirming and corroborating that he died. Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian who worked for the Romans; Tacitus, another early historian; Mara bar Serapion; Lucian; even the Jewish Talmud admits he was dead.
So the first "E" is execution: Jesus was dead.
The second "E" stands for early. We have early accounts or early reports that Jesus rose from the dead—in other words, reports that go right back to the beginning. Why is that important?
I used to think, like a lot of skeptics, that the resurrection was a legend. I knew it took time for legends to develop in the ancient world, so I figured, you know, 150 years after the death of Jesus, legends developed, mythologies were spun, stories were invented, and that's where the idea of the resurrection came from.
But what I've learned—and I continue this investigation to the present day—is that it decimates the claim that the resurrection is a legend. Here's why: we have preserved for us a creed of the earliest Christians—a creed, a statement of conviction based on eyewitness accounts that the earliest Christians, right there in the first century, would rally around based on facts that they knew to be true.
This creed contains the essence of Christianity: it says Jesus died for our sins, he was buried, and the third day he rose from the dead. Then it mentions the specific names of eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses to whom he appeared, including 500 people at once.
And then it says, parenthetically, by the way, a lot of those folks are still around, so if you don't believe me, go ahead and talk to them. Yeah, they're around; you can question them.
Now, this creed has been dated back by scholars to within months of the death of Jesus. How do we know? Well, the Apostle Paul preserved it for us. He wrote a letter to the church in Corinth about 21 to 25 years after the death of Jesus. He reports, he recounts this creed, and he indicates, past tense, "I already gave you this creed earlier."
So let's say within 20 years he had given this creed to the church in Corinth. We could stop there, and that would be very impressive when you consider the first two biographies of Alexander the Great by Arrian and Plutarch, written 400 years after his life, and they're generally considered reliable.
So within 20 years is really good, but we can go back earlier because we know that Paul used to be Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor, a hater of Christians. One to three years after the death of Jesus, he's on the road to Damascus. Boom! He has this encounter with the risen Christ. He becomes the Apostle Paul.
Immediately, he goes into Damascus and meets with some apostles. Now, many scholars believe this is when he was given the creed that he later writes in the letter. But others say, wait, it may have been three years later.
Three years later, Paul goes to Jerusalem and meets for 15 days with two eyewitnesses to the resurrection who were specifically named in the creed: Peter and James. The Greek word that Paul uses in Galatians to describe this meeting suggests that this was an investigative inquiry. They were checking each other out: what do you know? What did you see? What did you experience?
Some scholars believe this is when he was given the creed by two people specifically named in the creed. But either way, this means within one to six years after the death of Jesus, this creed is already in existence, and therefore the beliefs that make up that creed go back earlier, virtually to the cross itself.
In fact, probably the greatest scholar in this area, Dr. James D. G. Dunn, says this is a quote: "This tradition," by that he means this creed, "we can be entirely confident was formulated as a creed, as tradition, within months of the death of Jesus."
Within months! That is far too quick to write it off as a legend. In fact, one of the greatest classical historians who ever lived was A. N. Sherwin-White of Oxford. He understood the rate at which legend developed in the ancient world, and he said, "The passage of two generations of time is not even enough for legend to grow up and wipe out a solid core of historical truth."
We don't have two generations of time passing here; we've got a news flash, and the news flash goes right back to the beginning. So we have early, and we've got other early accounts right from the first century in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the book of Acts, and so forth.
So Jesus was dead: execution. Early accounts, which I believe discount the possibility that there's a legend.
The third "E" is for empty tomb. There are lots of reasons why we believe the tomb is empty, but I think the most convincing reason is that even the opponents of Jesus implicitly admitted that it was empty.
How do we know? Well, because when the disciples began proclaiming that Jesus had risen, what the opponents of Jesus said—we know there's some sources inside and outside the New Testament—was, "So, disciples, Jesus is risen." Opponents: "Oh, well, um, the disciples stole the body."
Now think about that. What it's a cover story! They're implicitly admitting the tomb is empty; they're trying to explain how it got empty. Right? It's like if you're a teacher and a student comes up to you and says, "A dog ate my homework."
That student's admitting, "Look, I don't have my homework, but I can explain what happened to it: the dog ate it." It's the same thing. So everybody's admitting the tomb is empty; that's not the issue. The issue is how did it get empty?
Then the fourth "E" stands for eyewitnesses. Not only was Jesus' tomb discovered empty, but over a period of time, he appears alive in a dozen different instances to more than 515 people—to skeptics and doubters, to men and women, to groups and individuals, indoors and outdoors, daytime and nighttime.
The disciples talked to him; they ate with him; they touched him. But here's what's interesting about the eyewitnesses. Remember I said earlier in ancient history we're lucky if we have one or two sources to confirm a fact?
Well, for the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources inside and outside the New Testament confirming and corroborating the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus. That is an avalanche of historical data.
It's convincing because, as you mentioned in the book, he talks about how the disciples later gave their lives for these claims. The pushback you got, of course, was, "Well, people die for lies all the time," which is true.
But people don't die for things they know to be lies. Exactly! And I've repeated that so many times; I got it from him. All right, and my congregation's sick of hearing about it probably. But that is one of the linchpins of your argument.
Absolutely! When we talk about the tomb being empty, yeah, well, the disciples stole the body. What's the problem with that claim? Is that they wouldn't have then given their lives for a lie. If they stole the body, they would have known, and they would have given up at some point and just gone on about their lives.
Rome and the Jews would have been happy to let them do that, but they didn't. They pressed on, and we have seven ancient sources—six of them outside the Bible—that tell us that the disciples lived lives of deprivation and suffering as a result of their proclamation that Jesus had risen.
What actually happened to a few of the disciples gets a little bit blurry in history, but that's not the point. The point is their willingness to die for it, and that is established beyond any doubt by the ancient record.
You're absolutely right; that was one of the final blocks that went into the case. I mean, because I thought, "Well, golly, there are all kinds of religious fanatics who will die for what they believe is true."
Kamikaze pilots in World War II would crash their planes because they believed spiritually if they die this way, they'd go to heaven. Terrorists will die. Why? Why are they willing to die in the process of these crimes that they commit? Because they believe, and they've been taught, and they believe it to the core of their being.
If they die this way, they'll go to heaven. But they can't know that for a fact; they just believe it. They were taught it, and they believe it.
The contrast is the disciples were in a unique position to know for a fact whether this is true or whether it's a lie. They talked to the resurrected Jesus; they touched him; they ate with him. They knew the truth, and they had the empty tomb, which backs it up as well.
So, yeah, I think it's a very strong case. Now, some people say—and this is one of my counterarguments that I came up with—"Well, wait a minute. They didn't bury crucifixion victims. They didn't bury execution victims back in Roman times. They would throw their bodies in a pit to be eaten by the dogs, or they'd leave them on the cross to be eaten by the birds. So, of course, Jesus' tomb was empty; he wasn't in the first place."
I thought, "Yeah, what about that?" And then I looked into it. What did I find? The Roman Digesta, which is a summary of law and procedure from the Roman Empire, specifically does allow for bodies of execution victims to be turned over for burial.
Number two, several years ago—well, probably back in the early '90s—they discovered the body of a buried crucifixion victim. He still had the spike through his heel bone and a piece of the olive wood attached, so he had been buried.
Certainly, some were buried. And then just recently, within the last year, they uncovered another crucifixion victim who had been buried again, with the evidence of the crucifixion reflected in the bones. So, some indeed were buried, so that kind of shoots that down.
The other argument that I bought for a while was that these were visions or hallucinations that the disciples had really encountered Jesus; they hallucinated. Okay? It's interesting that one of the most famous atheist New Testament scholars, Garrett Ludeman, said that it is certain historically—it's virtually a quote—he said, "It is historically certain that Peter and the other disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ."
Wow! That's the atheist talking. Well, why is he still an atheist? Because he believes these were visions; these were hallucinations.
So I'm a journalist; I check things out. I went to an expert on the human mind—a PhD in psychology, professor of psychology for 20 years in a major Midwestern university, written over 20 or 30 books on psychology. He was the president of a national association of psychologists.
I laid out all the historical data and said, "Now, Dr. Collins, wouldn't you admit to me these disciples didn't encounter the resurrected Jesus; they just had hallucinations?" He looked at me and said, "That's not possible."
He said, "Well, you seem pretty sure of yourself." He said, "I am." He said, "You've got to understand something about the nature of hallucinations. Hallucinations are like dreams; they happen in individual minds. They don't spread like the common cold."
It's not like you can wake your wife up in the middle of the night and say, "Honey, honey, I'm having a dream about a vacation in Maui. Let's both go back to sleep; I have the same dream. We'll save all the airfare; we'll save all the hotel costs."
It may be great if we could do that, but why can't we do that? Because dreams happen in individual minds, and that's the same with hallucinations.
In fact, he looked at me and said, "Lee, your earliest account, your most reliable historically, the earliest account says that 500 people encountered the resurrected Jesus at one time."
He said, "Lee, 500 people having the same hallucination at the same time would be a bigger miracle than the resurrection." And then he said, "And by the way, if these were just hallucinations, then I assume the body's still in the tomb."
Whoops! Oops! Everybody's gone.
Then I said, "Well, what if it's something more subtle? What if it's—" and I think this is what Dr. Ludeman, the atheist, would say—"that these were visions."
This is a known psychological phenomenon: that people want something so much, if they're primed for it, they can actually see things that aren't there. You know, they miss Jesus so much; he was their leader; they loved him.
"Oh, John, can't you see him? He's back! I see him over there in the shadows."
Well, there's a problem with that. James, the half-brother of Jesus, was a skeptic about Jesus during Jesus' lifetime. He wasn't psychologically primed to have a vision of his brother returning from the dead, and yet 1 Corinthians 15 says Jesus appeared to him.
What happened to him? He became a leader of the church, proclaiming that his brother had risen, and he was martyred for his faith.
Then the Apostle Paul hated Christians. He wasn't psychologically primed for a resurrection, which, by the way, was totally against the teachings of Judaism of the day—that there would be one resurrection in the end, not anything in the interim.
Paul wasn't psychologically primed for a vision, and yet he had this encounter with Christ. So, yeah, it's another little piece that we don't talk about a lot of evidence against the legend theory—that the resurrection of Jesus was a legend because legends must fulfill some preconceived expectation.
The resurrection of Jesus, as it happened, was not expected or anticipated by anyone—not even the most fundamentalist or orthodox of Jewish folks at the time expected there to be one man who would be resurrected first before all the rest of us are later.
Even the disciples, they didn't expect it. They didn't even know what was happening right after he resurrected. Like, he's there in front of them, like a whole new body, like, "Hey, guys!" And they're like doubting him.
Yeah, as it says, they worshiped him, and some doubted. Yeah, at the same time. And Jesus is like, "What else do I have to do to prove this to you guys?"
That's another reason why we value doubting here. It's because, you know, it's a tradition as old as Christianity itself, but it has to be doubts directed toward Jesus instead of in isolation away from him.