The First Witnesses to the Resurrection
The testimonies woven into the Gospels originated among persons with firsthand knowledge of Judea and Galilee, and their stories were retold so carefully that they preserved critical details
A new article at Crossway Books entitled “How to Be Confident in the Resurrection” takes a careful look at who the earliest witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus were and why their testimony seems to have been historically trustworthy:
How can anyone be confident that the resurrection really happened? The first followers of Jesus didn’t claim their leader rose from the dead because of gullible ignorance or blind faith. They knew dead people stay dead. Especially after they began to be persecuted, they had nothing to gain by persisting in their claim that Jesus had returned to life.
Yet some of these women and men had encountered an event so momentous they were ready to die rather than deny they saw a once-dead man alive. These initial eyewitnesses declared what they experienced, and in some cases they died for what they declared. At least a few of their firsthand testimonies eventually found their way into the New Testament.
Even if you think the resurrection of Jesus and the existence of a “Flying Spaghetti Monster” are equally preposterous, the testimonies of the first generation of witnesses should not be dismissed lightly. Something upended the lives of these men and women and made them willing to die for what they believed they had seen. After decades of studying the historical aftermath of these events, I still believe the resurrection makes the best sense of the evidence.
The resurrection is an event to which we can call witnesses, and these witnesses include reports that are traceable to the people, places, and communities where sightings of a resurrected Jesus were first reported.
What this article as a whole argues is that the testimonies woven into the Gospels originated among persons with firsthand knowledge of Judea and Galilee and that their stories were retold so carefully that they preserved critical details.
To read the rest of the article and find out why these testimonies were trustworthy, go here: “How to Be Confident in the Resurrection”