A Great Resource On Jesus' Resurrection

Than Christopoulos recently had several guests on his YouTube channel to discuss the resurrection of Jesus. The video isn't exhaustive, and they weren't attempting to make it exhaustive, but they provide a great summary of much of the evidence for the historicity of the resurrection. It's about four-and-a-half hours long, but the discussion is excellent and worth watching all the way through. It's the culmination in a long series of videos, but you don't need to watch the previous ones to benefit a lot from watching this one. If you don't want to watch the entire video in one sitting, it's easy to break it into segments to watch separately. Go here for the beginning of the segment on the historical data, here for the one on objections to the appearances of Jesus, and here for the discussion of inference to the best explanation and rival hypotheses, for example. Or you can just stop wherever else you see fit and start there when you have time to watch more of it. The whole thing is worth watching, so I recommend going through all of it. I'll supplement their points with some of my own, though I'm also not trying to be exhaustive:

- On the empty tomb, see my article here on early interest in the burial of Jesus and its implications for early interest in and knowledge about the empty tomb. Since extrabiblical evidence for the empty tomb wasn't discussed much in the video, also see my article here on the evidence from Justin Martyr. As I discuss there and elsewhere, Justin cites a first-century Jewish source corroborating the empty tomb, we have good reason to think he and Tertullian had evidence other than Matthew's gospel for their reports about Jewish corroboration, and Justin alludes to corroboration from Gentile non-Christians. Since Justin refers to those Gentiles getting their information from Jewish sources, that gives us another layer of evidence for that Jewish corroboration and it illustrates that ancient Gentile critics of Christianity didn't just go by what Christians told them about their religion. Pagans surely would have depended on Christians for their information on Christianity to some extent, but they also would have consulted other sources, like non-Christian Jews. (For another illustration of that fact, which seems likely in the abstract and is corroborated by multiple concrete examples, see Celsus' consultation of one or more Jewish sources in the process of composing his treatise against Christianity.) The pagan corroboration of the empty tomb is important not only because pagans consulted Jewish sources to some extent, but also because the pagans themselves had some degree of close contact with the relevant original sources. The large majority of pagans either didn't live in Israel or lived there without having had much contact with early Christianity, but some of them surely would have had some relevant contact, such as Pilate and those who worked with him, like the Roman soldiers involved in Jesus' crucifixion and related contexts. Pagan views of the empty tomb would have been shaped by sources like Pilate and Judaism to some extent. So, though the pagan corroboration of the empty tomb alluded to by Justin has less significance than the Jewish corroboration, it still has some significance.

- See here regarding the likely presence of non-extant documents on Jesus' resurrection, not just oral reports, prior to the gospels.

- Bram Rawlings made a lot of good points in the video about the appearance to Paul, but I want to say more. See here for Steve Hays and I discussing more evidence for the historicity of that appearance and the likely physicality of it. My material is in the comments section of the thread, so don't stop after the initial post.

- As I discuss in that thread, we have good reason to accept the report that multiple travel companions of Paul also experienced the appearance to some extent. So, that adds a minimum of two more individuals to the list of non-Christians who apparently witnessed the risen Jesus. I've argued that Jude should be added to the list. So, we have good evidence that at least five non-Christians experienced resurrection appearances (James, Jude, Paul, at least two travel companions of Paul).

- I've argued that we have good evidence from 1 Corinthians and other sources outside the gospels and Acts that the resurrection appearances were polymodal, not just visual. In other words, material like what we find in 1 Corinthians is more difficult to reconcile with something like a hallucination hypothesis than is typically suggested. See here.

- For a discussion of how well 1 Corinthians 15 dovetails with the gospels and Acts, see here.

- Here's a list of fifty agreements among the resurrection accounts.

- On the suffering of the resurrection witnesses and the martyrdom of some of them, see here. The video by Than and his colleagues made a lot of the relevant points, but my series just linked adds some others. One of the issues I address there is the evidence we have for the martyrdom of John the son of Zebedee (e.g., Mark 10:39, how the language of that passage was used by Polycarp or an early source close to him). To briefly expand on that second parenthetical point I just made, it's worth noting that even if you don't think the report of Polycarp applying the language of Mark 10 to his own martyrdom is historical, it at least reflects the beliefs of a source historically close to Polycarp. So, if Jesus, James the son of Zebedee, and Polycarp (somebody with a close relationship to John) all had the language of Mark 10 applied to them in the context of martyrdom, that adds significant weight to the conclusion that John died in the same manner. You can read my series linked above for more on that and other subjects. For example, I discuss evidence from Polycarp and other sources that the apostles other than Judas died in a state of Christian faith rather than renouncing that faith, regardless of whether they died as martyrs. Or see here on non-Christian corroboration of how the apostles died, including some evidence not discussed in the video under consideration.

- I typically don't include the Shroud of Turin in discussions of the resurrection, and I wouldn't begin with it or make it my primary argument even if I were to include it. I don't blame Than and his colleagues for not discussing it. But for those who are interested, see here and the other posts in our archives on the subject. I'm not highly confident about the Shroud's authenticity, but I still think it's probable that it provides evidence for the resurrection. You can make a plausible argument that the Shroud is paranormal and evidence for the resurrection even if the 1988 carbon dating indicating a medieval origin is correct (e.g., viewing it as a miraculous medieval icon of some sort could best explain the totality of the evidence, since dating the Shroud to the medieval era still leaves many aspects of the Shroud unexplained). I still lean somewhat against the correctness of that 1988 carbon dating, but I haven't followed Shroud issues closely since the mid 2010s. (The article linked above was written in 2014.)

- Our evaluation of the evidence for the resurrection is shaped by how we view background issues. A background issue that's highly significant, but often neglected is the evidence for prophecy fulfillment. Much of the argument for Jesus' fulfillment of prophecy can be made on the basis of material that's corroborated by non-Christians in one way or another. Some prophecy fulfillments frequently denied by modern critics were acknowledged by ancient non-Christians, and some of the ways Jesus aligns with various prophecies are widely acknowledged among modern non-Christians. Here's a post that provides several examples, and you can find more discussions of that material in our archives.