The incredible news

by Editor · April 12, 2006

Picture the scene in the bustling Jerusalem newsroom one April day in 33AD, just after the feast of Passover. You are the editor, and have just received word that the executed leader from the countryside has risen from the dead-just a couple of days after you featured his crucifixion in the local news section (on page 4, bottom right).

Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead at some point between being interred at the crypt made available by Joseph of Arimathaea on Friday afternoon and the empty tomb being found deserted on Sunday morning.

Should you publish the report? Or sell it to the tabloid down the road, the one that is happy to print any old rubbish, as long as it makes for a good headline?

Of course, there were no newspapers in the first century. News spread by word of mouth, with the messengers reputation being the measure of his reports credibility.

The first reporters of the apparent resurrection were women, whose testimony was considered worthless, yet Jesus Christs Resurrection went on to first make local headline news, and then find an international audience.

Regardless of the sources of the story the women, and the rural followers of the crucified man, something astonishing had happened, something so startling that people were willing to die for it.

Paul of Tarsus could, with utter confidence and on the record, refer to 500 witnesses, most of whom are still alive (1 Cor 15:6-7), who had actually seen the risen Christ at the same time. That number is too high to lend credence to the notion of mass delusion, or for Paul to risk making an untrue claim.

The Resurrection was a truly incredible eventso implausible that if it had been a delusion or deception, those reporting it would have been comfortably exposed as fools or hoaxers. Instead they were taken seriously.

Today we might run the risk of considering the early Christians and their contemporaries with some condescension, as the city slicker might regard a credulous yokel. This would be a mistake. These societies were philosophically and theologically sophisticated enough to spot a hoax, especially one that would challenge their profoundly entrenched beliefs.

Bible scholars will agree that there are elements in Scripture that should not be read literally or understood out of context. The Resurrection, however, does not fall into that category. There are eminent academics who have critically examined the historical Jesus, such as the Jewish scholar Paula Frederiksen or Harvard professor Helmut Koester. These have no interest in propagating Christianity; indeed, they question or reject many of the elements in the Gospels most Christians take for granted. But they do not reject the Resurrection, because the extraordinary reaction to it cannot be explained away.

Most Christians do not need the approval of academics to embrace the Resurrection as fact. Conversely, there are a few Christians who believe they do not need the fact of the Resurrection to sustain their faith.

Still, we are Christians for no other reason than the Resurrection. Had Christ died on the Cross, he would have been another one in a long line of forgotten would-be messiahs. But he rose again, as he had promised (in a way few understood at the time).

Paul said: If Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain (1 Cor 15-17). The evidence is persuasive that our faith is not in vain. In Jesus we shall have everlasting life.