Objections to the Resurrection of Jesus – Question 1
If Jesus did not come back from the dead, as the New Testament plainly says He did, then some alternative explanation must be offered to explain what happened. The problem is that other explanations take as much faith to believe as the New Testament’s account. Indeed, these alternative theories leave more questions unanswered than they explain. There is really no plausible explanation to replace what the New Testament says happened; Jesus rose from the dead. We can make the following observations.
First, we want to make it clear that it is theoretically possible to falsify the resurrection account. It can be done in one of two ways. Either some has to:
Since the body off Jesus has never been produced, we will examine the major theories that attempt to explain away the New Testament account of the resurrection of Christ.
These include the following theories, accusations, and claims by those who reject the idea that Jesus has risen.
Each of these theories, accusations, and claims, has been popular at one time or another throughout the history of the church. Some of them were proposed by scholars, others were not. Today, many of these popular theories are rejected even by everyone, including unbelievers.
Generally speaking, sophisticated unbelievers will account for the belief in the resurrection of Jesus by claiming the story became embellished as it was told and retold. In other words, it was a legend that grew over time.
However, as we shall see, neither this alternative explanation, nor any other alternative explanation, fits all the facts. The only explanation that does fit all the facts is the one the New Testament consistently gives; Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
There have been a number of theories that have been proposed throughout the history of the church that have attempted to give an alternative explanation to biblical claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead three days after His death. However, as the evidence is examined, each one of these theories fails to explain all the known facts. While not all these theories are put forward today by unbelievers, they have been in the past. Therefore, to be thorough, it is necessary to examine each of them.
Indeed, usually there is someone who can still be found who still holds to some version of one of these theories. Therefore, it is essential that each of these theories be examined in detail and shown to be exactly what they are; inadequate explanations of what happened to Jesus after His death. As we will see, the Christian need not have any fear of the evidence. When all the facts are examined it will become clear that Jesus Christ did indeed come back from the dead.
The Blue Letter Bible ministry and the BLB Institute hold to the historical, conservative Christian faith, which includes a firm belief in the inerrancy of Scripture. Since the text and audio content provided by BLB represent a range of evangelical traditions, all of the ideas and principles conveyed in the resource materials are not necessarily affirmed, in total, by this ministry.
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