Consistent Agreement The scholars quoted above represent critical, skeptical scholarship, not the work of believers. When these scholars examine each of the five claims that build the case for the Resurrection, the majority of scholars agree that each claim is true. Critical scholarship agrees:

1. After multiple trials, Jesus died on a Roman Cross.
2. Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus’ body in a tomb whose location the public knew.
3. On the Sunday following Jesus’ crucifixion, this tomb stood empty.
4. Immediately following this, Jesus’ disciples claimed to experience Him alive, risen from death.
5. These disciples carried the claim of Jesus’ Resurrection throughout the ancient world, gladly sacrificing their lives to attest to its truth. Now these claims must be explained. Explaining (Away) The Claims At this point, scholarship splits. Those who believe the Resurrection of Jesus to be possible have no trouble accepting all five claims. But those who attempt to deny the Resurrection must find a way to deny one or more of these claims. If you want to deny the Resurrection, you must come up with an alternate explanation for these five claims. Yet no coherent explanation has put forth that encompasses all five. Let’s explore a few of the most common alternate attempts to explain these five claims: The Swoon Theory This theory suggests that Jesus did not die on the Cross, but merely passed out, or swooned. In the cool rock of the tomb, Jesus revived. This theory denies Claim 1, above, suggesting that Jesus did not die on the Cross. Yet this is the one claim that historians agree on more than any other. Roman crucifixion was brutal by design, intending that no one should ever come off a cross alive. If anyone was crucified, you didn’t have to ask whether or not they died. Every Roman citizen knew that if a person was crucified, they did not come down until they were dead. Additionally, this theory must deny Claim 5. The disciples witnessed a Jesus so glorious in His Resurrection appearance that He inspired them to give up everything for His mission. It is hard to imagine the disciples being thus inspired by a Jesus who had been brutalized on the Cross and hobbled out of the tomb covered in scars and bruises. The Theft Theory This theory suggests that Jesus died on the Cross and was buried, but the disciples (or a gardener, as the Toledoth Yeshu suggests) managed to steal away His body on Sunday morning. It therefore affirms Claims 1, 2, and 3, but must try to deny 4 and 5. As covered above, most scholars agree that Jesus’ disciples experienced Him alive after His death. These visions so motivated them that they transformed the ancient world, giving everything they had to spread the news of Jesus’ triumph over death. For the theft theory to be true, the disciples would have to be liars and deceivers. But this doesn’t match what we know of human nature. Liars might be able to trick others into dying for their lies, but they don’t sacrifice their own lives for things they know are lies. Yet the disciples freely gave all they had to testify to the reality of Jesus’ Resurrection. The Hallucination Theory This theory suggests that Jesus indeed died and was buried. Yet instead of Jesus rising from the dead, this theory suggests that the disciples merely hallucinated Jesus appearing to them. They desired Jesus to be alive so badly that their minds conjured up hallucinations to comfort them and assure them that all was not lost. This theory affirms Claims 1, 2, and 4, yet it cannot explain 3 or 5. If the disciples were merely hallucinating a risen Christ, then His body would still lay in the tomb, available to be discovered. To dispel the power of the hallucinations, all one would need to do is produce the body of Jesus. Likewise, if the disciples merely hallucinated a risen Christ, we are at a loss to explain why every one of them gave up everything to testify to the truth of a risen Christ. Likewise, we are at a loss to explain how 500 people could hallucinate Jesus appearing to them at the same time, as Paul reports. Groups do not share hallucinations. Individual people hallucinate in their own minds. The Twin Theory This creative theory suggests that Jesus indeed died and was buried, yet three days afterward, Jesus’ previously-unknown twin arrived in Jerusalem. This twin did such a convincing portrayal of Jesus that he fooled the disciples into believing that Jesus had risen again. This theory therefore affirms Claims 1, 2, and 4, but again fails to deal with 3 or 5. Jesus’ body would still be in the tomb for all to see, thereby disproving that this twin was the real Jesus. Likewise, if Jesus’ body was still in the grave, we are at a loss to explain why the disciples would give up everything to further His mission. We are also at a loss to explain the effect of the visions of the Resurrected Jesus that the disciples experienced. It is hard to grasp how a mere twin could how a twin could march freely through locked doors , or knock Paul off his horse, blind him with a brilliant light, and place scales over his eyes. An Honest Conclusion Every alternate explanation above must deny at least two of the claims that the majority of scholars certify. There is only one explanation that accepts all five claims certified by scholarship: that Jesus indeed rose from death. Many skeptics accuse Christianity of dealing loosely with history, as though we set aside what everyone knows to be true in order to believe what we want to believe. But Christianity is the only belief that deals honestly with the history surrounding Jesus’ death. There is no explanation that can deal honestly with all five historically-certain claims other than Jesus rising from death to new life. The evidence is so compelling that legions of brilliant minds have embarked on the quest to disprove the Resurrection of Jesus, only to end up believing in it on the strength of the evidence. These include J.D. Anderon, Abdu Murray, William Ramsay, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, Gilbert West, and Frank Morison. Even Pinchas Lapide, a leading Jewish theologian, declared that he is now convinced by the strength of the evidence that the God of Israel, the same God he has worshiped his whole life as a faithful Jew, indeed rose Jesus Christ from the grave. Simon Greenleaf, Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University, is another who chose to follow Jesus after exploring the evidence for the Resurrection. He concluded: “A person who rejects Christ may choose to say that, 'I do not accept it.' He may not choose to say, ‘There is not enough evidence.’” Abdu Murray, an intellectual who followed the evidence from Islam to Christianity, explained his difficulty with the claims of the Resurrection. I didn’t want to believe the evidence for the resurrection because if I did, it would change who I was. Everything about me would change, and I wanted to have no part of that. I wasn’t ready for that. So I had intellectually assented to these truths, but I hadn’t embraced them as true. I often put it this way: The reason it took me nine years is not that the answers were hard to find. I actually found them fairly early. I wrestled with them for years. The answers aren’t hard to find, but they are hard to accept. And I think that’s true not just of Muslims. I think it’s true of anybody, quite frankly. Explain the Resurrection, Explain the World There is other evidence we could consider — evidence from archaeology, from ancient historians, from philosophy, and so forth. But even if we limit ourselves only to the few claims that skeptical scholars agree with, we can still build a compelling case that Jesus Christ died on a Roman cross and rose from death three days later. This is why nearly a third of the world’s population believes in Jesus Christ. The evidence is simply overwhelming.