DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD? - PART 6

                                          DID JESUS RISE
FROM THE DEAD

         PART 6 

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         Y-Jesus.co)


Grave Robbing

As Robinson continued his investigation, he began to examine the motives of Jesus' followers. Maybe the supposed resurrection was actually a stolen body. But if so, how does one account for all the reported appearance of  a resurrected Jesus?

Historian Paul Johnson, in  A History of the Jews, wrote:  "What mattered was not the circumstances of His death but that he was widely an obstinately believed, by an expanding circle of people, to have risen again.

The tomb was indeed empty. But it wasn't the mere absence of a body that could have galvanized Jesus' followers (especially if they were the ones who had stolen it). Something extraordinary must have happened, for the followers of Jesus ceased mourning, ceased hiding, and began  fearlessly proclaiming that they had seen Jesus alive.

Each eyewitness accounts reports that Jesus suddenly appeared bodily to his followers. The women first. Morison wondered why conspirators would make women central to its plot.  In the first century women virtually had no rights, person hood or status. If the plot were to succeed, Morison reasoned, the conspirators would  have portrayed men, not women, as the first to see Jesus alive. And yet we hear that the women touched Him, spoke with Him and were the first to find the empty tomb.

Later, according to eyewitness accounts, all the disciples saw Jesus on more than ten separate occasions.  They wrote that He showed them His hands and His feet and told them to touch Him. And He reportedly ate with them and later He appeared alive to more than 500 of them on one occasion.

Legal scholar John Warwick Montgomery stated:

"In 56 AD. (the apostle Paul wrote that over 500 people had seen the risen Jesus and that most of them were still alive) 1st Corinthians 15:6.  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."


Bible scholars, Geisler
and Turek agree. "If the
 Resurrection had not
 occurred , why would 
the Apostle Paul give 
such a list of supposed
 eyewitnesses? He would 
immediately lose all credibility
 with his Corinthian readers by 
lying so blatantly."

Peter told a crowd in Caesarea why he and the other disciples were so convinced that Jesus was alive.

"We apostles are witnesses to all He did throughout Israel and in Jerusalem. They put Him to death by crucifying Him, but God raised Him to life three days later..... We were those who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead."  (Acts 10:39-41)

British Bible scholar Michael Green remarked, "the appearances of Jesus are as well authenticated as anything in antiquity.... There
can be no rational doubt that they occurred."


next post  Wedsnesday  12th August