The Evidence for the Resurrection

In an earlier post, I argued that the resurrection of Jesus is initially implausible compared to the possibility the account is an example of legendary development. If Christianity is to be considered even remotely reasonable, then there have to be aspects of the resurrection accounts that are very implausible presuming the legendary development hypothesis.

If I am going to debunk Christianity, it is important to me that I am not merely defeating a straw man version of Christianity. I want to be open to all the relevant evidences for and against Christianity. I also want to use the best analytical tools to evaluate the evidences (hence my prior use of Bayes' Theorem). In this post, I would like to compile the aspects of the resurrection accounts that supposedly make the legendary development hypothesis implausible.

In other posts, I am going to list some of the aspects of the New Testament that seem less likely if the resurrection is true. A fair assessment should not arbitrarily discard any evidence. Subsequently, I will begin the assessment of each of the evidences listed. The goal of this is to see where the evidence points. If Christians are correct the likelihood of the resurrection is very nearly one, if we non-Christians are correct, the likelihood of the resurrection is nearly zero. I want to make the evidence I am considering and my reasoning as open as possible. If there are good reasons to think I am wrong, I want to know them. My goal here is to follow the evidence.

The historical evidence for the resurrection is mostly from Dr. William Lane Craig in the books, "Reasonable Faith" and "Jesus Under Fire". Some of the evidence Craig presents can be found in his debate with Dr. Bart Ehrman here. In that debate, Dr. Craig presents experts' conclusions as evidence. There are some pitfalls to using experts conclusions as evidence. It is quite likely that experts are influenced by things that should not affect ones reasoning, such as their background and/or funding. It is not that experts can't overcome biases, but I want to examine the evidence that should influence the experts. The evidences that really need explanation are aspects of existing documents. The existing documents are copies (of copies) of earlier reports. I am going to am not going to do justice to any piece of evidence here. But if I am ignoring any piece of significant evidence, please let me know.

Aspects of resurrection accounts considered unlikely on the legendary development hypothesis:

1. The lack of time between the reported event and the reports
2. The report of James' conversion recorded in Galatians
3. The report of preaching in Jerusalem which would be unlikely if there was an occupied tomb
4. Paul's account in 1 Cor 15:3 is unlikely on the legendary hypothesis
5. The "first day of the week" motif in Mark instead of "on the third day"
6. The reported discovery of the tomb by women
7. The report of an early Jewish polemic in Matthew
8. The lack of a record of tomb veneration
9. Paul's testimony of the appearance to 500
10. The narrative of the empty tomb is relatively free of theological and apologetic claims.
11. The account of the burial seems less likely for a legend

Of course this blog's purpose is to give evidence that is unlikely on the resurrection hypothesis. In addition to the evidences for Christianity, I will also consider evidences that indicate the stories are legendary including: The parallels between of the gospel of Mark and other legends. How Jesus knowledge, strength and control seemed to grow in later accounts. I will also look at the apparent evolution of the story of the resurrection.

If I am missing major aspects of the historical accounts that support the fact of resurrection over legendary development, please let me know.