Is There Evidence That Jesus Rose From the Dead?

It’s no exaggeration to say that the resurrection of Jesus is the central pillar of the Christian faith. To quote Paul, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17).

In fact, if you read through the account of Acts, you’ll quickly see that the resurrection of Jesus was not just crucial to the Christian message; it was the Christian message: 

“God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it” (The apostle Peter to the crowd at Pentecost, Acts 2:32).

As a result, all of the evidence in favour of Jesus’ resurrection is preserved in Christian sources. A Christian was, after all, by definition someone who believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. The best that non-Christian sources can supply us with is corroboration that this was indeed what the Christians believed.

That said, we do have in the New Testament a substantial body of historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection in the form of eyewitness testimony. In this article, we’ll just look at one example.

The evidence of 1 Corinthians 15

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that…to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters…Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).

1 Corinthians is historically important because its authorship and date of writing are virtually uncontested by critical scholars. Paul wrote this letter with the help of Sosthenes, who scribed it for him, to the church of Corinth during his stay in Ephesus in 52 A.D.

The passage above (15:3–8) serves as a crucial piece of evidence for Jesus’ resurrection in two important ways.

1. 1 Corinthians 15 can be reasonably traced to Peter and James, who were eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus.

When Paul states that he “received” and “passed on” the gospel to the Corinthians, he’s using a well establish rabbinical formula. The question is, who did he “receive” it from?

When Paul states that he “received” and “passed on” the gospel to the Corinthians, he’s using a well establish rabbinical formula.

Paul gives the answer in Galatians 1:18. Three years after his encounter with Jesus and conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9), Paul said that he travelled to Jerusalem. There he stayed with Peter for fifteen days, seeing James the brother of Jesus also.

Since Paul had been preaching about Jesus in and around Arabia to that point, it’s safe to assume that the subject of the gospel filled their discussion.

What we have in this passage then is Paul rehearsing a gospel tradition that he received within six years of Jesus’ resurrection from two eyewitness apostles.

And, this all takes place in Jerusalem, where Jesus rose and appeared to his disciples, as well as 500 other witnesses. Most of these witnesses would have presumably still been living in Jerusalem.

2. 1 Corinthians 15 bears the marks of an already established oral tradition.

Verses 3–8 are written in the form of a pre-established saying, using the formulaic pattern of “that…that…that…etc.” This means that what Paul is communicating comes from a tradition of teaching, where teacher passes to student, who receives and in turn passes on what he has received.

But if Paul received this from Peter and James, it means that what they passed on to him was already in this structured form, which means it had already been established and in use.

What we can reasonably say is that Paul was being given a pre‑existing oral tradition from eye witnesses.

Since none of the New Testament was written at this point (ca. 36 A.D.), what we can reasonably say is that Paul was being given a pre-existing oral tradition from eye witnesses. And this only three years from Jesus’ resurrection. In other words, an already standardized body of Christian teaching, which was the core of the gospel message.

Conclusion on the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection

In summary, 1 Corinthians 15 provides us with a historically preserved account based on eyewitness testimony to within three years of Jesus’ resurrection.

And, the form of what Paul “received” and “passed on” was that of a pre-existing oral teaching used by the earliest disciples, over 500 of whom were also eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus.

Will this convince the doubter or silence the skeptic? Probably not.

What it does offer, however, is a defense against any notion that Christian belief in Jesus’ resurrection is a mere “leap of faith”. Rather, it’s a belief corroborated by good, historical evidence. And this is only reasonable to expect if Jesus really did rise from the dead.