More Than a Carpenter (14 page)

Two Oxford-educated friends, author Gilbert West and statesman Lord George Lyttleton, were determined to destroy the basis of the Christian faith. West was going to demonstrate the fallacy of the Resurrection, and Lyttleton was going to prove that Saul of Tarsus never converted to Christianity. Both men came to a complete turnaround in their positions and became ardent followers of Jesus. Lord Lyttleton writes: “The conversion and apostleship of Saint Paul alone, duly considered, was of itself a demonstration sufficient to prove Christianity to be a Divine Revelation.”
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He concludes that if Paul’s twenty-five years of suffering and service for Christ were a reality, then his conversion was true, for everything he did began with that sudden change. And if Paul’s conversion was true, then Jesus Christ rose from the dead, for everything Paul was and did he attributed to his witnessing the risen Christ.

Chapter 10: Can You Keep a Good Man Down?

A student at the University of Uruguay asked me, “Professor McDowell, why couldn’t you find some way to refute Christianity?”

I answered, “For a very simple reason. I was unable to explain away the fact that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a real event in history.”

After spending more than seven hundred hours studying this subject and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I came to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is either one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted on humanity, or it is the most important fact in history.

The Resurrection takes the question “Is Christianity valid?” out of the realm of philosophy and makes it a question of history. Does Christianity have a solid historical basis? Is sufficient evidence available to warrant belief in the Resurrection?

Here are some of the issues and claims relevant to the question: Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish prophet who claimed to be the Christ prophesied in the Jewish Scriptures, was arrested, judged to be a political criminal, and crucified. Three days after his death and burial, some women who went to his tomb found the body to be missing. Christ’s disciples claimed that God had raised him from the dead and that he had appeared to them many times before ascending to heaven.

From this foundation, Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire and has continued to exert great influence throughout the world through all subsequent centuries.

The big question is, Did the Resurrection actually happen?

The Death and Burial of Jesus

After Jesus was condemned to death, he was stripped of his clothing and was whipped, according to Roman custom, before crucifixion.

Alexander Metherell, who holds a medical degree from the University of Miami and a doctorate in engineering from the University of Bristol in England, made a detailed examination of Christ’s whipping at the hands of the Romans. He explains the process:

The soldier would use a whip of braided leather thongs with metal balls woven into them. When the whip would strike the flesh, these balls would cause deep bruises or contusions, which would break open with further blows. And the whip had pieces of sharp bone as well, which would cut the flesh severely.

The back would be so shredded that part of the spine was sometimes exposed by the deep, deep cuts. The whipping would have gone all the way from the shoulders down to the back, the buttocks, and the back of the legs. It was just terrible.

One physician who has studied Roman beatings said, “As the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh.” A third-century historian by the name of Eusebius described flogging by saying, “The sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.”

We know that many people would die from this kind of beating even before they could be crucified. At the least, the victim would experience tremendous pain and go into hypovolemic shock.
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Given the brutality of the whipping, as well as his subsequent crucifixion, it is historically certain that Jesus was dead. Even the members of the radical Jesus Seminar, which was popular in the 1990s, accepted the death of Jesus. This is why John Dominic Crossan said that the death of Jesus by crucifixion “is as sure as anything historical can ever be.”
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What Do You Think?

Have you ever seen any movies about Jesus’ life that included his death and resurrection, such as 
The Passion of the Christ
? What went through your mind when you saw the torture and crucifixion of Christ? Do you think he deserved what happened to him?

In accordance with Jewish burial customs, the body of Jesus was then wrapped in a linen cloth. About seventy-five pounds of aromatic spices, mixed together to form a gummy substance, were applied to the wrappings around the body (see John 19:39-40). After the body was placed in a solid rock tomb, an extremely large stone, weighing approximately two tons, was rolled by means of levers against the entrance (see Matthew 27:60).

A Roman guard of strictly disciplined men was stationed to watch the tomb. Fear of punishment among these men “produced flawless attention to duty, especially in the night watches.”
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This guard affixed on the tomb the Roman seal, a stamp of Roman power and authority.
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The seal was meant to prevent vandalizing. Anyone trying to move the stone from the tomb’s entrance would have broken the seal and thus incurred the wrath of Roman law.

Yet in spite of the guard and the seal, the tomb was empty.

The Empty Tomb

The followers of Jesus claimed he had risen from the dead. They reported that he appeared to them over a period of forty days, showing himself to them by many convincing proofs (some versions of the Bible say “infallible proofs”; see, for example, Acts 1:3,
NKJV
). The apostle Paul said that Jesus appeared to more than five hundred of his followers at one time, the majority of whom were still alive and could confirm what he wrote (see 1 Corinthians 15:3-8).

Arthur Michael Ramsey, former archbishop of Canterbury, writes: “I believe in the Resurrection, partly because a series of facts are unaccountable without it.”
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The empty tomb was “too notorious to be denied.”
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German theologian Paul Althaus states that the claim of the Resurrection “could not have been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact for all concerned.”
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Paul L. Maier concludes:

If all the evidence is weighed carefully and fairly, it is indeed justifiable, according to the canons of historical research, to conclude that [Jesus’ tomb] was actually empty. . . . And no shred of evidence has yet been discovered in literary sources, epigraphy, or archaeology that would disprove this statement.
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How can we explain the empty tomb?

Based on overwhelming historical evidence, Christians believe that Jesus was bodily resurrected in real time and space by the supernatural power of God. The difficulties in belief may be great, but the problems inherent in disbelief are even greater.

The situation at the tomb after the Resurrection is significant. The Roman seal was broken, which meant automatic crucifixion upside down for whoever broke it. The massive stone was moved not just from the entrance but from the entire sepulcher, looking as if it had been picked up and carried away.
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The guard unit had fled. Byzantine Roman emperor Justinian in his Digest 49:16 lists eighteen offenses for which a Roman guard unit could be put to death. These included falling asleep or leaving one’s position unguarded.

The women came and found the tomb empty. They panicked and went back to tell the men. Peter and John ran to the tomb. John arrived first, but he didn’t enter. He looked inside and saw the graveclothes, caved in a little, but empty. The body of Christ had passed right through them into a new existence. Let’s face it; a sight like that would make anyone a believer.

What Do You Think?

Have you ever been part of a group and something happened that involved all of you? Were your stories the same? How difficult is it to get everyone to tell the exact same story?

Alternative Theories to the Resurrection

Many people have advanced alternate theories to explain the Resurrection, but the theories are so contrived and illogical when compared with the claims of Christianity that their very weakness actually helps build confidence in the truth of the Resurrection.

The Wrong-Tomb Theory

A theory propounded by British biblical scholar Kirsopp Lake assumes that the women who reported the body missing had mistakenly gone to the wrong tomb that morning. If so, then the disciples who went to check the women’s story must have gone to the wrong tomb as well. We can be certain, however, that the Jewish authorities, who had asked for that Roman guard to be stationed at the tomb to prevent the body from being stolen, would not have been mistaken about the location. The Roman guards would also not have been mistaken, for they were there. If a wrong tomb were involved, the Jewish authorities would have lost no time in producing the body from the proper tomb, thus effectively quenching for all time any rumor of a resurrection.

The Hallucination Theory

Another attempted explanation claims that the appearances of Jesus after the Resurrection were either illusions or hallucinations. This theory runs counter to psychological principles governing the occurrence of hallucinations. It is not credible to think that five hundred people could have seen the same hallucination for forty days. Also the hallucination theory does not coincide with the historical situation or the mental state of the apostles.

So, where was the actual body of Jesus, and why didn’t those who opposed him produce it?

The Swoon Theory

Nineteenth-century German rationalist Karl Venturini popularized the swoon theory several centuries ago, and it is often suggested even today. It claims that Jesus didn’t really die; he merely fainted from exhaustion and loss of blood. Everyone thought he was dead, but later he was resuscitated, and the disciples thought it to be a resurrection.

German theologian David Friedrich Strauss, himself no believer in the Resurrection, deals a deathblow to any thought that Jesus could have revived from a swoon:

It is impossible that a being who had stolen half-dead out of the sepulcher, who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, who required bandaging, strengthening and indulgence, and who still at last yielded to his sufferings, could have given to the disciples the impression that he was a Conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of Life, an impression which lay at the bottom of their future ministry. Such a resuscitation could only have weakened the impression which He had made upon them in life and in death, at the most could only have given it an elegiac voice, but could by no possibility have changed their sorrow into enthusiasm, have elevated their reverence into worship.
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The Stolen-Body Theory

Another theory maintains that the disciples stole the body of Jesus while the guards slept. The depression and cowardice of the disciples make a hard-hitting argument against it. Can we imagine that they suddenly became so brave and daring as to face a detachment of select soldiers at the tomb and steal the body? They were in no mood to attempt anything like that.

Commenting on the proposition that the disciples stole Christ’s body, J. N. D. Anderson says:

This would run totally contrary to all we know of them: their ethical teaching, the quality of their lives, their steadfastness in suffering and persecution. Nor would it begin to explain their dramatic transformation from dejected and dispirited escapists into witnesses whom no opposition could muzzle.
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The Moved-Body Theory

Another theory says that the Roman or Jewish authorities moved Christ’s body from the tomb. This explanation is no more reasonable than the stolen-body theory. If the authorities had the body in their possession or knew where it was, why didn’t they explain that they had taken it, thus putting to an effective end the disciples’ preaching of the Resurrection in Jerusalem? If the authorities had taken the body, why didn’t they explain exactly where they had put it? Why didn’t they recover the corpse, display it on a cart, and wheel it through the center of Jerusalem? Such an action would have utterly destroyed Christianity.

John Warwick Montgomery comments:

It passes the bounds of credibility that the early Christians could have manufactured such a tale and then preached it among those who might easily have refuted it simply by producing the body of Jesus.
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The Relocated-Body Theory

In
The Empty Tomb,
Jeffrey Jay Lowder describes an interesting hypothesis, namely, that the body of Jesus was temporarily stored in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea on Friday night before being relocated to a criminal’s tomb.
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The tomb of Jesus was empty not because he resurrected, but because the body was simply relocated. Thus, the disciples mistakenly believed he was resurrected. This hypothesis has gained a considerable following on the Internet.