Did Jesus rise from the dead? (Part 1)

My wife and I recently received a letter from an old friend of hers who knew me back in the old days when I was a Christian.

In the letter he said, “I was sorry to hear that Barry has given up on his faith. I enclose a booklet that I hope helps – for me the resurrection of Jesus proves it’s all really true and there’s a lot of evidence that Jesus really did rise from the dead.”

I know his heart is in the right place and he thinks he’s helping me, so I’m not going to attack him personally over this, but what makes him think I need help? Come to that, what makes him think I hadn’t already examined this stuff in detail before I decided Christianity was just another made-up religion? I did not make that decision lightly or quickly, and a huge amount of thought went into it.

The booklet this friend sent me was Verdict On The Empty Tomb by Val Grieve, printed in 1976.

Over the next few days I hope to post a series of articles based on the various chapters of the booklet, detailing exactly why I don’t accept that Jesus actually rose from the dead, and why I don’t believe this “evidence” to be anything of the sort.

Chapter 1: Verdict On The Empty Tomb.

"The Resurrection is the very heart of the Christian faith ... Without the Resurrection there is no gospel. As Paul says, 'If Christ was not raised, your faith has nothing in it' (1 Corinthians 15:17)."

On this point I agree with the author. If Christ was not raised from the dead, then Christianity is worthless. The entire religion hangs on the factuality of this one claim: that following his death, Jesus actually came back to life and still lives today. If satisfactory evidence cannot be brought to prove this statement, then there is no reason to believe Christianity's claims, and certainly no good reason to be a Christian.

It is an interesting point that Christians, generally speaking, are not Christians because they have been persuaded by the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. Rather, Christian belief (in common with most religions) is more usually a product of culture, an unquestioned assumption that people are conditioned to believe from a very early age. It is far more usual for Christians to believe first and then try to find arguments for what they believe, rather than the other way around. Nevertheless, I shall examine the arguments put forward in this booklet.

“…in no other religion do we find its followers saying that its founder is God, that he rose from the dead and is alive today changing people’s lives.”

This is clearly not true. Adherents of most religions believe that the ultimate source of their religion is God (or the gods).

Rising from the dead? There are many gods who have supposedly risen from the dead. A listof them can be found here. Jesus is hardly unique in this regard. Why do Christians accept the story of Jesus’s resurrection but ignore those of other gods?

As for changing people’s lives, this is claim is not exclusive to Christianity either. Ask any Muslim if he thinks Allah has changed his life for the better, and see what answer you get.

The bottom line is evidence. It’s easy to make statements extolling the virtues of Christianity and stating that Jesus rose from the dead, but as Carl Sagan reportedly said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And as Christopher Hitchens said, what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Over the next few posts I’ll be looking at the standard of the “evidence” contained in the booklet and seeing if any of it actually stands up to scrutiny.

Click here for part 2.
Click here for part 3.
Click here for part 4.