Excerpted from Timothy Paul Jones, Did the Resurrection Really Happen? (Crossway, 2025)

Before becoming a father, I never imagined how much of parenting consists of finding the right tactics to determine whether or not your children are telling the truth.

Suppose I step into the family room and see a hole in the sheetrock that wasn’t there before. Despite clear evidence that something suspicious has taken place, every one of my children denies any knowledge about how a wall might have mysteriously developed an eight-inch indentation (true story).

Faced with such circumstances, I have sometimes separated my daughters into different rooms and asked each individual to tell me what happened. If two or more children who have not colluded with each other tell me the same story, it is worth considering the possibility that they are the ones telling the truth. That is especially true when one of my children admits particular details that do not place her in the best light.

Imagine, for example, that one of my daughters admits she and her sister were both practicing gymnastics when they had been told to do their chores. Let us further imagine this child confesses that her accomplice in these misdemeanors misjudged a handstand and put her knee through the wall. Now, suppose that the accomplice who is about to be indicted for vandalizing the family room is also inexplicably limping (also a true story).

Case closed.

The same principles that have helped me solve so many complicated parenting cases are also helpful in the practice of history. When multiple independent sources agree on the key contours of a story, it is worth considering the possibility that the narrative they share is credible. That is especially true when this shared story includes details that do not place the storyteller in the best light.

So what does all of this have to do with whether or not the resurrection really happened?

When it comes to the story of Jesus’s resurrection, multiple independent sources agree on the same general sequence of events. Every retelling of the resurrection mentions that Jesus died, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, and that he appeared to specific individuals and groups. All four New Testament Gospels, as well as a later independent retelling of the resurrection preserved in the manuscript Papyrus Cairo 10759, identify Mary Magdalene as the first witness at the empty tomb. When it comes to when and how Jesus died, the eminent Roman historian Tacitus agrees with the Gospel writers that Jesus was crucified in Judea during the administration of Pontius Pilate.

Taken together, these points represent a striking conflux of concurrences scattered throughout a series of sources that did not depend on each other. Plus, there is one particular detail no one would have fabricated: Mary Magdalene as the initial witness.

No one would have would have positioned a woman at the empty tomb if this story had been a fictional account concocted by first-century followers of Jesus. That is because, in the contexts where Christianity first took root and grew, women were not regarded as trustworthy witnesses. The presence of this inconvenient detail in the resurrection story suggests early Christians were willing to preserve the truth about what happened even when it was awkward. Prioritizing a woman’s testimony makes no sense unless Mary Magdalene actually was the first witness at the tomb.

An Event Rooted in History

The striking consistency of these reports, even when it comes to inconvenient details, is one reason why many skeptics agree that at least some parts of the story must have happened. The resurrection is a story to which we can call witnesses, and some of these witnesses are not even Christians. Bart Ehrman was an agnostic who recently began to describe himself as an atheist. Despite his disbelief in the resurrection, Ehrman admits,

I am struck by a certain consistency among otherwise independent witnesses in placing Mary Magdalene both at the cross and at the tomb on the third day. . . . It seems hard to believe that this just happened by way of a fluke of storytelling. It seems much more likely that, at least with the traditions involving the empty tomb, we are dealing with something actually rooted in history.

New Testament scholar Paula Fredriksen is not a Christian. Yet as she reads the reports of the earliest followers of Jesus, she is open-minded enough to recognize that

in their own terms what they saw was the raised Jesus. . . . All the historic evidence we have afterwards attests to their conviction that that’s what they saw. I’m not saying that they really did see the raised Jesus. . . . I don’t know what they saw. But I do know, as a historian, that they must have seen something.

Even people who aren’t Christians can admit “we are dealing with something actually rooted in history” and “they must have seen something.” But what was it that the first followers of Jesus saw?

Christians have always believed these first witnesses saw Jesus himself in risen flesh. Yet the question we are exploring together is whether or not the resurrection really happened, and anyone who is interested in that question is likely to wonder about possibilities that do not involve a corpse coming back to life.

So what are the alternatives to bodily resurrection? And how probable are these possibilities?

Taylor Swift’s Grandmother and the Empty Tomb

One of the most prominent possibilities is that the first witnesses sensed a post-mortem presence they misinterpreted as resurrection.

In the weeks and months after a loved one dies, it is not uncommon for friends or family members to sense the nearby presence of the deceased person. In the words of Taylor Swift reflecting on her feeling that her deceased grandmother Marjorie was still present with her, “And if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were talking to me now. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were still around.” Sometimes, this sense that a loved one is “still around” can take the form of visions that seem physical. It is even possible for groups of people to experience collective hallucinations.

Might that have been what happened among the first followers of Jesus?

What if the alleged witnesses merely experienced a profound sense of their crucified leader’s presence that they misperceived as resurrection? Or suppose a few of them hallucinated or experienced a vision that convinced them they saw Jesus alive in the flesh. If so, what the disciples witnessed was not a body transformed and restored to life. At best, what happened was closer to the experience of the boy in The Sixth Sense who interacted with dead people who did not know they were dead. At worst, they were duped by a collective hallucination. Either way, Jesus is no more alive today than Taylor Swift’s grandmother.

But there is a problem with this proposition.

Neither visions nor hallucinations can cause a tomb to be empty.

Or, to put it another way, even if Grandma Marjorie’s presence is still around on Taylor’s latest tour, Marjorie’s remains remain in the ground. The body of Jesus, however, is nowhere to be found.

That is why the traditions involving the empty tomb are so important. One key claim that is consistent throughout multiple retellings of the story is that Mary Magdalene saw the cave where the corpse of Jesus was laid and returned to find the tomb empty (Matt. 27:61–28:7; Mark 15:47–16:7; Luke 23:55–24:11). It is difficult to make any reasonable case that the body of Jesus was still buried when Mary visited the tomb. If his body was still entombed behind the rolling stone when people began to proclaim he was alive, the religious leaders could have quickly confounded every claim of resurrection by disinterring the dead body and parading the corpse through the streets of Jerusalem. Such an act would have ended the earliest disciples’ devotion to the risen Jesus while their claims were still confined to a tiny sect. But the religious leaders do not seem to have attempted anything of this sort, which suggests the body was no longer accessible to them.

If the tomb was truly empty—and it certainly seems to have been—it becomes very difficult to dismiss the disciples’ experiences as visions or hallucinations. But it is not merely the emptiness of the tomb that makes me confident Jesus was raised from the dead. It is also the deaths of the witnesses.

 

What People Won’t Die For—and What They Will

“I only believe histories in which witnesses were to be slaughtered,” French philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote. It’s a bit of an overstatement, but there’s also a kernel of common sense in Pascal’s words. Historical claims are most believable when witnesses refuse to alter their claims even in the face of death.

Of course, martyrdom by itself doesn’t prove that a particular event happened. Myriads of people throughout history have died for lies that they thought were true. What makes a claim most believable is when the martyrs are in a position to know firsthand whether or not their testimony is true. If you’re uncertain about a claim you’re making or if you know the claim is false, you will back away from the story at some point before it costs you your life.

Atheists around the world have declared themselves members of the satirical Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (yes, it’s an actual organization that claims “millions, if not thousands” of followers). And yet, not one of these individuals will ever die for this cause because they know their “Pastafarian” faith a hoax. This principle that prevents Pastafarian martyrs is not limited to hoax religions. Throughout history, people have sometimes sacrificed their lives for lies, but human beings are not typically willing to die for a falsehood when they know it is false.

Which brings us to a crucial question about the resurrection: Did any of those who claimed to have seen the risen Jesus persist in their devotion to this message at the cost of their lives?

The answer is yes—and not merely once, but at least three times.

How the Martyrdoms of Eyewitnesses Make the Resurrection Credible

Multiple early sources testify together that no fewer than three alleged witnesses of the resurrection died for what they declared: Simon Peter, James the brother of Jesus, and James the son of Zebedee.

* James the son of Zebedee was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I to please the religious leaders in Jerusalem, according to reports from Luke (Acts 12:1–3) and Clement of Alexandria.

* The high priest Ananus had James the brother of Jesus stoned to death, according to Josephus and Eusebius.

* Peter was executed in Rome—perhaps by crucifixion—during the reign of Emperor Nero. John’s Gospel (John 21:18–19) as well as a letter written by Clement of Rome hint at Peter’s martyrdom, and other writers explicitly mention how he died for his faith.

If the claims of resurrection had been falsified, one or more of these leaders would almost certainly have been in a position to know about the fabrication. If the disciples stole the body of Jesus as some Jewish religious leaders claimed (Matt. 28:11–15) or if their encounters with his resurrected flesh were ambiguous, these three would have been aware of that, too.

Once their claims about Jesus caused them to be ostracized by fellow Jews, Peter and the two Jameses had nothing to gain by continuing to proclaim the resurrection. Especially after their claims about Jesus exposed them to localized outbursts of Roman persecution, they knew they had everything to lose by continuing to insist Jesus was alive. Still, they chose death over any denial of their devotion to the risen Jesus. They persisted to the point of execution, and their persistence provides strong evidence for the resurrection’s reality.

When I was a college student struggling with my faith, this aspect of the evidence seized me at a moment when I thought the last dregs of faith had been drained from my soul. People sometimes die for lies, but they do not typically die for a lie when they know it is a lie. Yet witnesses who would have known if the resurrection had been a fabrication clung to their confidence that Jesus was alive all the way to death. That recognition shook my skepticism and forced me to doubt my doubts. Decades later, it still does. When I consider these evidences, I find myself convinced that the resurrection is only implausible if we presuppose a world where miracles are impossible.