The Significance Of 1 Corinthians 15

One of the most significant New Testament passages illustrating the nature of the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is 1 Corinthians 15. Regarding a creed Paul cites in that passage, Gary Habermas and Michael Licona write:

"In fact, many critical scholars hold that Paul received it [the creed of 1 Corinthians 15] from the disciples Peter and James while visiting them in Jerusalem three years after his conversion [Galatians 1:18-19]. If so, Paul learned it within five years of Jesus' crucifixion and from the disciples themselves. At minimum, we have source material that dates within two decades of the alleged event of Jesus' resurrection and comes from a source that Paul thought was reliable. Dean John Rodgers of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry comments, 'This is the sort of data that historians of antiquity drool over.'" (The Case For The Resurrection Of Jesus [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 2004], pp. 52-53)

Though we can attain a lot of data on the resurrection from the gospels and other sources, notice some facts we can establish just from this creed in 1 Corinthians 15 and its immediate context:

1. The testimony to the resurrection is early. The whole spectrum of scholarship, from liberals to conservatives, is in agreement that 1 Corinthians can be dated to within 30 years of Jesus’ death and that the creed in 1 Corinthians 15 can be dated even earlier (1 Corinthians 15:3).

2. The testimony to the resurrection is Jewish. Paul refers to the resurrection occurring "according to the [Jewish] scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:4). The mainstream Jewish view of resurrection at the time Paul was writing involved a resurrection of the same body that went into the grave. As Paul goes on to explain, that which goes into the ground is what comes out in a transformed state (1 Corinthians 15:36-38).

3. The testimony to the resurrection is accepted by people other than the professing eyewitnesses, and is still considered credible decades later (1 Corinthians 15:1), even among people who doubted the resurrection of individual believers (1 Corinthians 15:12-13).

4. The testimony to the resurrection is from multiple sources. Paul mentions hundreds of people (1 Corinthians 15:5-8).

5. The testimony to the resurrection is detailed. Paul names people and mentions identifiable groups, he mentions witnesses in their chronological order ("then", "after that", and "last of all" in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8), and he knows what proportion of the witnesses are still living (1 Corinthians 15:6).

6. The testimony to the resurrection comes from eyewitnesses. Paul was an eyewitness (1 Corinthians 15:8), and other eyewitnesses were giving their testimony (1 Corinthians 15:11).

7. The testimony to the resurrection comes not only from individual experiences, but also from group experiences. Hallucinations are individual experiences, but the apostles saw the risen Jesus together, as did more than 500 people at once (1 Corinthians 15:5-7).

8. The largest group mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15 is referred to as seeing Jesus "at one time" (1 Corinthians 15:6), not just around the same time. The fact that such a detail is included indicates that the early Christians were aware of the significance of group appearances and were interested in preserving such details.

9. Some of the witnesses saw Jesus more than once. Peter apparently was present for at least three of the appearances (1 Corinthians 15:5, 15:7)

10. The appearances must have occurred over a lengthy enough period of time to allow Peter to be alone or with different groups of people for multiple appearances.

11. The testimony to the resurrection doesn’t just come from people who were already believers when they saw the risen Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:9).

12. The testimony to the resurrection is given realistically. Paul understood the significance of what he was asserting ("of first importance" in 1 Corinthians 15:3 and 1 Corinthians 15:14-19).

13. The testimony to the resurrection was given by people willing to suffer for what they were testifying to (1 Corinthians 15:30-32).

14. The testimony to the resurrection was reevaluated on an ongoing basis. Even about two to three decades after the resurrection occurred, Paul was following the lives of the other resurrection witnesses so closely that he knew that a majority of the more than 500 people he mentions were still living, though some had died (1 Corinthians 5:6). Apparently, Paul was being careful with the data he was citing and was continually thinking about it and rethinking it. He wasn’t being careless.

15. The testimony to the resurrection is unified. Whatever false views non-leaders in the early church may have adopted, the leaders of the church, including Jesus’ closest disciples, were agreed in what they were teaching on the subject (1 Corinthians 15:11).

Such facts and others can also be derived from other early Christian sources. But even from 1 Corinthians alone, especially chapter 15, a document that both liberals and conservatives accept as early and as written by Paul, we can dismiss many popular arguments against the traditional Christian view of Jesus’ resurrection. The claim that the resurrection belief came from unhistorical legends that gradually developed over time is refuted by the earliness of 1 Corinthians and the creed of 1 Corinthians 15. The theory that the witnesses of the risen Christ were hallucinating is inconsistent with the unbelief of some of the witnesses, the realism and carefulness of Paul’s testimony, and the fact that Jesus sometimes appeared to multiple people at once. Other skeptical theories likewise can’t survive the scrutiny of this one passage, much less the combined scrutiny of all of the evidence.