We are going to make some observations about Jesus’ resurrection based on the list of his appearances on our previous post.
Firstly, Jesus resurrected with a physical body according to the gospels as we mentioned before.
What is so special about that? Isn’t it part of what resurrection means?
Actually, it is not for the people around Jesus at his time around 30 A.D. Base on the gospels’ description, the kind of resurrection that Jesus demonstrates has never been thought of!
By then, some people in Israel did not think that resurrection is possible. The gospel of Mark tells us that “the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection…” The Sadducees are one of the several factions of the Jews who are associated with the upper class in the society.
Some other people believed that resurrection happens at the end of human history. In other words, it would happen at the end of the world. It would be a general resurrection of all people. Not some, but all people would resurrect at the same time. Even some of Jesus’ disciples hold this view before Jesus’ resurrection.
Martha and her brother were Jesus’ disciples. After her brother was dead for a few days, Jesus came to her village. Jesus told the broken-hearted Martha that her brother “would rise again”. Martha replied, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection of the last day”. Martha believed that her brother would come back to life only at the end of human history with everybody else. However, Jesus' resurrection happened before the end of human history, and it happened to only one person, Jesus.
If the resurrection story was made up, then we have to ask why someone would make up something that no one would believe from the very beginning? It is just not the kind of resurrection that anyone could believe at 30 A. D.
In fact, the only person who could have believed such kind of resurrection is Jesus himself. The gospels record at least twelve times that Jesus told his disciples that he would come back to life after his death. In the gospel of Matthew, he said that “The son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill Him, and on the third day He will be raised up”.
We may ask if Jesus’ prediction to his death and resurrection are legitimately Jesus’ own words, or perhaps these are latter additions by some unknown Christians. Many people have studied these resurrection claims, and it will take too much space to report them here.
Jesus’ predictions to his death was surprising to his disciples. Why? They believed Jesus is the nation’s savior, someone who would drive away the Romans and establish the mighty Israelite kingdom forever. So how could this savior, a mighty warrior, be killed? It was entirely unbelievable. By the way, if you read the gospels’ account on Jesus’ predictions of his death and resurrection, you will notice that his disciples seemed to hear only the part about his death, but never paid attention about his resurrection. That is another prove that Jesus’ resurrection was unimaginable at his time.
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