Did It Really Happen?

On October 21, 1997, the Lee County School Board in Florida voted 3 to 2 to adopt the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools program. The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and People for the American Way were quick to bring a lawsuit against the School Board. The lawsuit contended that the planned course would present the Bible as history – and that would be unconstitutional.

In a split decision, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Kovakevich said that the School Board can implement a course based on the Old Testament, but may not teach a planned companion course based on the New Testament.

In her twenty-page ruling, the Judge said she had been convinced by the school’s argument that the Old Testament course was “ostensibly designed to teach history and not religion.” But she ruled out teaching the New Testament as history, saying that she “finds it difficult to conceive how the account of the resurrection or of miracles could be taught as secular history.” The judge’s ruling leaves us with a major question: Can the resurrection of Jesus be viewed as an historical event? 

As a term, history may refer to what actually happened, or it may refer to an historian’s interpretation of what actually happened. The historian does not have to believe what happened, but is obligated to report what happened.

In attempting to determine what happened, historians ask questions about location and witnesses to the alleged events. They look for corroborative evidence. They examine archaeological findings in their quest to answer the big question, did it happen?

Judge Kovakevich suggests that such tests cannot be applied to the resurrection of Jesus. In essence, she finds it difficult to conceive that Jesus could rise from the dead. If that is her position, then she is not interested in investigating the event of the resurrection. Rather, she is expressing her inability to conceive of such an event.

Matt Perman makes the point that a method commonly used today to determine the historicity of an event is "inference to the best explanation." William Lane Craig describes this as an approach where we "begin with the evidence available to us and then infer what would, if true, provide the best explanation of that evidence." In other words, we ought to accept an event as historical if it gives the best explanation for the evidence surrounding it.

When we look at the evidence, the truth of the resurrection emerges very clearly as the best explanation. There is no other theory that even comes close to accounting for the evidence. Therefore, there is solid historical grounds for the truth that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

No one is asking the historian to explain the process of resurrection – that is the job of the theologian. However, we are asking the historian to respond to the Christians’ claim of an empty tomb. Following His death, Jesus was placed in a tomb, a common practice at that time. Three days later, Christians’ claim that the tomb was empty.

In order to avoid theft, the authorities actually secured the tomb in which Jesus was placed. Yet the tomb was found empty. The announcement of an empty tomb was not made in another city some years later. Rather, it was made in the same vicinity where Jesus was killed, a few days later. If the claim of resurrection was false, then why didn’t the authorities simply identify a sealed tomb?

Interestingly, it was in order to respond to an empty tomb, the Jews attempted to bribe the guards that were on duty to protect the tomb. The case of bribery would not have been necessary if the tomb was not empty.

Furthermore, the story of the empty tomb was not legend. There is clear evidence that within seven years after the alleged resurrection, the story began to be documented. Normally, it would take decades before a story is considered to be a legend. This story was documented within the lifetime of eye witnesses. 

One finds it very strange that the tomb of Jesus was never venerated as a shrine. This is striking because it was the 1st century custom to set up a shrine at the site of a holy man's bones. There were at least 50 such cites in Jesus' day. Since there was no such shrine for Jesus, it suggests that his bones weren't there.   

Following his conversion, Paul, a strong opponent of Christianity, made it very clear: “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith...” (1 Corinthians 15:14). 

Scholars may debate the process of resurrection. However, there should be no debate about the fact of resurrection – the empty tomb continues to provide historical evidence that something phenomenal happened following the death of Jesus.