Three Arguments for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus

1)      Hundreds of people were witnesses to the resurrection, many of them known historical personages, writing their accounts contemporaneously.

2)      Saul of Tarsus was a well-known zealot and persecutor of the followers of Jesus, who denied the resurrection and used violence in an attempt to squash the nascent Christian movement. His experience of seeing the resurrected Jesus on his journey to Damascus was the cause of this immediate conversion to Christianity. This historical episode is well-founded and by various sources, including three by Saul (now Paul) himself.

3)      The third argument is based on the cultural expectation of the Messiah to which Jesus made his claim and his followers agreed. For a century prior to Jesus and a century following, many individuals made claims to be the Messiah. The three qualifications of a Messiah were as follows: sit on the throne of David, rebuild the Temple, and defeat Israel’s enemies. Yet, every single one of them died by some form or another, usually by Rome, disproving to everyone, particularly, their followers, that they were not the Messiah. A dead Messiah was a failed Messiah. It would be something of a historical anomaly for people to say, “You know that guy who was killed by the Romans … maybe he was the Messiah.” That doesn’t make historic sense. In Jesus case, there had to have been something that superseded the basic disqualification of being put to death by Rome.