Why the resurrection happened

INTRODUCTION

To start off, while billions of people believe that Yeshua (Jesus Christ) was truly the Messiah and resurrected from the dead, many others believe he wasn’t even real. In the following, you shall be presented with evidence to one of the world’s most frequently asked question, and controversial topic: Did Jesus truly did Resurrect from the dead?

Chapter 1

To start off, we are going to primarily focus on the historical account and modern day scholarly consensus of Jesus and his life. Virtually all scholars of Antiquity accept the fact that Jesus was a real historical figure and did actually live. Many attempts to deny his historicity have been rejected and labeled as fringe theories. For example, Bart Ehrman, an agnostic, believes that Jesus was real. He mentions, “I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it’s silly to talk about him not existing. I don’t know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this.” The minority of the minorities who do against the belief that Jesus was real are characterized as lunatics. Why is it that almost every scholar in Antiquity believe that Jesus is real? Here are just a few non- Christian sources from the late 1st century to 5th century of Jesus’s authenticity.

• 1. Thallus (52AD)

- Julius Africanus, around 221AD quotes Thallus who previously tried to explain away the darkness occurring at Jesus’ crucifixion:“On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.” (Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18:1)

• 2. Tacitus (56-120AD) (among the most trusted of ancient historians)

- “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. 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, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.”

- In this account, Tacitus confirms several historical elements of the Biblical narrative: Jesus lived in Judea, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and had followers who were persecuted for their faith in Christ.

• 3. Flavius Josephus

- In “Antiquities of the Jews” he writes: Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receiving the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was called the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct to this day.”

- This is amazing, non-biblical, non-Christian evidence to confirm the existence of Jesus, that He had a band of followers who considered Him the Christ, and Sanhedrin brought Jesus to Pontius Pilate and had Him crucified on the cross.

• 4. Celsus

-Celcus was hostile of the Gospels, however he affirmed and fortified their content.

-“Jesus had come from a village in Judea, and was the son of a poor Jewess who gained her living by the work of her own hands. His mother had been turned out of doors by her husband, who was a carpenter by trade, on being convicted of adultery [with a soldier named Panthéra (i.32)]. Being thus driven away by her husband, and wandering about in disgrace, she gave birth to Jesus, a bastard. Jesus, on account of his poverty, was hired out to go to Egypt. While there he acquired certain (magical) powers which Egyptians pride themselves on possessing. He returned home highly elated at possessing these powers, and on the strength of them gave himself out to be a god.”

-In this account, Celsus confirms that Jesus had an earthly father who was a carpenter, possessed unusual magical powers and claimed to be God.

PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION

A message such of that of Jesus’s at that time was disgusting and horrendous. They strived on honor and status. Dr. David D silva and multiple other scholars admit that Christianity was founded on a premise that should’ve died and failed from the moment it began in such a culture. The message was incompatible with the most deeply rooted religious ideology of the Gentile And Roman world. Not only that, they changed the day of sabbath from Saturday to Sunday and to convince people of that at the time they would’ve need a big burden of proof. Essentially, they pretty much went against 2000 years of tradition and somehow convinced people that Jesus was the Messiah.

Women were also the ones who discovered Jesus’s body and at the time women were not considered credible sources whenever it came to being witnesses and were often disregarded. This would have not been just an incredulous but hugely embarrassing detail for the early disciples and the fact that the detail remains proves that the disciples were accurately relaying the discovery of the empty tomb no matter how embarrassing it was for them personally.

COUNTER-ARGUMENTS

Many people claim that the disciples could’ve all just been hallucinating. Now not only is this utterly illogical but also plain out ridiculous. To start off, There are serious problems with the hallucination theory because first any belief in Jesus’s resurrection due to hallucination could’ve been easily expelled by Jewish authorities by simply opening the tomb and finding the body still resting there. Second as is established by science, hallucinations cannot create new ideas, they simply work with the preexisting mental framework. As devout Jews the disciples were never expecting a resurrection, let alone a belief or idea that Jesus would have a bodily resurrection. A hallucination could not have convinced a devout Jew that the event for he had no basis could have occurred. Secondly, the odds of all his disciples all suffering from grief hallucinations is astronomical to the point of absurdity. There’s no case like that, that has ever been recorded in medical history. It’s well documented that Jesus appeared to groups of the disciples at the same time and hallucinations cannot be shared by multiple individuals. One individual cannot see what another person is hallucinating and vice versa. Hallucinations simply don’t just lead to lifelong ideological changes and the disciples underwent traumatic and unprecedented and theological changes practically overnight.

Not only that, their is no account of the disciples ever being witnesses at the crucifixion because they were too embarrassed, scared and even denied Jesus when asked if they affiliated with him but yet afterwards when they say him resurrect they took it to their death without ever taking back their belief in him. Regardless of what you believe historians admit that there was indeed an event so incredible around 30Ad that split the Jewish religion in 2.

COULD JAMES AND PAUL HAVE LIED ?

James and his brothers only believed that Jesus was the messiah after his resurrection and were proven to be skeptics and non followers of Jesus during Jesus’s ministry. Could this have been made up? No early Christian wouldnt dare to dishonor a prominent leader by claiming he was once Jesus enemy. The early church was a highly persecuted and hated minority with a messiah who was just shamefully crucified. Why would James suddenly feel the need to make up an appearance of Jesus resurrection if there was nothing to gain but shame and dishonor and being martyred by proclaiming that his brother is Lord after he had already mocked him openly.

Paul was in fact a religious terrorist and a devout Jew. He was a prominent and powerful figure on the rise by making a name for himself while he persecuted the church and was tasked with killing Christians. He had everything going for him and all of a sudden he has an urge to leave all that and join a persecuted minority he already hated and despised. A sudden conversion he knew to be a lie would take a miracle in itself. Neither of them were grieving Jesus death so they couldn’t have had hallucinated this especially Paul who hated the church. If Paul simply had a dream he would’ve called it a dream and moved on. Paul had to arguably the most mentally ill person to ever lived to have had experienced visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, conversion disorder and messiah complex all at the same time on his road to Damascus.

CONCLUSION

The only question left to explain is why devout Jews at that time would suddenly believe and go against their religion by claiming that Jesus was the Messiah if they had believed what they had seen especially knowing the fact that they had a great chance of being sentenced to death for their beliefs.