Historical Evidence of Jesus' Resurrection: The transformation of Paul and James

Greetings, and welcome to the Faith Chapel Podcast. My name is Jason,

and I am the pastor of Faith Chapel.

This is the seventh episode in the series where we are exploring the historical

evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

Today's evidence will discuss the change of attitude of Saul of Tarsus,

also known as the Apostle Paul, and James, the brother of Jesus.

These two men were hostile or opposing Jesus during his earthly life and early

after his reported resurrection, and then they both had encounters that changed

their attitudes toward him.

This dramatic change is the historical evidence we will look at in this episode.

What would or could change these men's views of Jesus so dramatically.

Thanks for joining us today.

Okay, so some of the evidences that we have gone over in this time are about

how we have four different accounts when we look at Matthew,

Mark, Luke, and John of how Jesus resurrected.

And these are people that have always been inside the inner circle of who Jesus

is. But today we're going to be looking at the evidence of two people who converted to Christianity.

From outside the circle and the experiences they have and how these two bring

up some historical evidences for us in believing that Jesus is alive.

So we're going to start with the two individuals introducing them.

Both of whom we know, and then we're going to go from there.

So Gary Habermas is a New Testament scholar, and he really focuses on the resurrection of Jesus.

And in an interview that I saw him give with a YouTube channel called Capturing Christianity,

he mentioned six things that he uses as historical evidence for believing in

the resurrection of Jesus.

The last two are the two people that we're going to be talking about today,

and so this is what he says about them.

And then the last two would be individuals, James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul,

both of whom become Christian because they believed they had experiences which

were appearances of the risen Jesus.

Those are the six I would use, And to my knowledge, I've had dialogues with

atheists, agnostics, scholars, specialists, and they don't dispute any of those.

So after he gets done explaining the four, he then goes into these last two,

which are James, the brother of Jesus and Paul and their conversion to Christianity.

And after he gets done with all six of them, many of them that we've already

talked about, but after he gets through all six of them,

people who are skeptical of the resurrection of Jesus are going to be like,

I'm not disputing anything that you're saying.

And so these, again, are building a house so that we can see how they point and where they point,

in order to make the best determination of the evidence we have.

And when we look at the evidence in Scripture, there is one place we can look

to see that both James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul both had experiences of Jesus.

And this comes from 1 Corinthians 15, verses 7 and 8.

1 Corinthians 15:7

When Paul is writing here, then he was seen, he is here as Jesus,

then Jesus was seen by James and later by all the apostles.

Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him.

So the basis of the claims that James and Paul became followers of Jesus because

they had an experience that they believed they had seen the resurrected Jesus

can be seen in these two verses.

James is mentioned here. Paul says, I also saw him.

And so the claims that Jesus appeared to them can be found here in scripture.

When it comes to Paul, we also have other aspects of these, of Paul's conversion

and Paul's experiences, but these are where both of them are found in the same location.

So when we go to the case for Christ, which was Lee Strobel interviewed J.P. Moreland.

He says this about the evidence of James and Paul being followers of Jesus.

He says, Another piece of circumstantial evidence is that there were hardened

skeptics who didn't believe in Jesus before his crucifixion and were to some

degree dead set against Christianity,

who turned around and adopted the Christian faith after Jesus's death.

There's no good reason for this apart from them having experienced the resurrected Christ.

So what he is saying here is that James and Paul were both dead set against

Christianity, and we'll go into the reasons why later on,

but they were so far away from Christianity that to have them come to a place

of faith in Jesus is evidence that they saw something big.

And what do they claim they saw?

They claim they saw the resurrected Jesus.

And this would explain then why they had such radical transformations to be

people who not only believed in Jesus,

but as we'll see later on, both eventually gave their lives for the sake of

Jesus and not denying that he is the risen Savior.

So Paul and James, outside of the 12 disciples, outside of the people who are

giving testimony as believers in Jesus, they provide another layer of evidence for us to help us.

To help us to see that, to help us to point, it's pointing us from the evidence

to that Jesus is truly raised from the dead.

And so we're just going to look at both of these men's stories and how they

flow and where they come from as hardened skeptics and non-believers to repentant

all-in followers for Jesus.

So Paul is the more famous of the two, and we know more of his story because

he's written 13 of the New Testament books,

the letters to the various churches and individuals, and the book of Acts is

more than half about his missionary journeys and what happened to him.

And so we know a great deal more about Paul than we do James,

and so we're going to start with Paul and where the evidence leads us.

So we're going to start in Galatians chapter 1 verse 13,

Galatians 1:13

where Paul gives his own confession of where he was at before he interacted

with the resurrected Jesus.

He says to the Galatians, you know what I was like when I followed the Jewish

religion, how I violently persecuted God's church.

I did my best to destroy it.

And so Paul there confesses, like, I was adamantly against this sect of Christianity.

I did not want them to survive. I wanted them completely eradicated from this world.

And so that's what his own confession says. Then in Acts 26,

right before he gets sent to Rome for his trial in front of Caesar,

he again confesses this same idea.

In Acts 26, verse 9 through 11, we read, I used to believe that I ought to do

Acts 26:9–11

everything I could to oppose the very name of Jesus the Nazarene.

Indeed, I did just that in Jerusalem.

Authorized by the leading priest, I caused many believers there to be sent to prison,

and I cast my vote against them when they were condemned to Many times I had

been punished in synagogues to get them to curse Jesus.

I was so violently opposed to them that I even chased them down in foreign cities.

And so he is like all in. He is, whatever he does, he is full of zeal.

And at that moment in time, he

was full of energy and passion to eradicate Jesus's name from this planet.

And the fascinating thing about the way he describes his fervor to eliminate

Christianity even goes further into understanding how violently he did oppose it.

So according to Kostenberger in The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown,

this is what he says about what Paul was like before that encounter with Jesus.

One cannot underestimate Paul's aggression and viciousness in persecuting the

church that was inspired by his misguided zeal.

When Paul described his efforts to persecute the church, he used the language

of warfare and made clear that his intention was to obliterate the church completely.

In Acts 8.3, Luke describes Paul's destruction of the church using the Greek verb lumenomai,

a verb used in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, to speak of a wild animal

such as a lion, bear, or leopard tearing at raw flesh.

Paul's zeal in persecuting the church was like the savage rage of a hungry predator

frenzied by the taste of blood.

And so that really kind of brings out how intent he was, how intense he was

about eradicating the name of Jesus.

He uses in his own language words that describe war.

And that's what he felt like he was at.

He was putting on his armory and he's going to war against Christianity.

And then Luke, as he's writing, he uses this term that describes a predator

just ripping open the carcass of its prey.

And so these are both violent acts, and that's what Paul was doing here.

But we all know what happens next on the road to Damascus where Paul encounters the risen Jesus.

And let's just look at the change that happens from there.

So after his encounter with Jesus, this is from Acts chapter 9, verses 22 to 25, it says.

Acts 9:22–25

Saul's preaching, this is Paul, became more and more powerful,

and the Jews in Damascus couldn't refute his proofs that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.

After a while, some of the Jews plotted together to kill him.

They were watching for him day and night at the city gate so they could murder him.

But Paul was told about their place,

So during the night, some of the other believers lowered him in a large basket

through an opening in the city wall.

So Paul went from someone on the war path to someone who people were against

him because he had started following Jesus.

And the things that he was teaching about Jesus, nobody could refute.

Nobody could deny that he had studied the scriptures, that he could see how

the Messiah was supposed to suffer and die and then be raised to life again.

And nobody could say anything against him. So what did they decide to do?

They decided to eliminate him because he was teaching about Jesus.

So he goes from violently opposing to being opposed violently for speaking the name of Jesus.

Then in Acts 16, I love the story of Paul and Silas in Philippi,

and just this aspect of it.

Not only was Paul willing to stand up and refute people who wanted to kill him,

he was also willing and able to suffer the pains of being beaten for the name of Jesus.

So again, he is not just somebody who just had a, let's just all get along type of attitude.

Like he was all in for Jesus at this moment.

So in the story of Paul's time in Philippi, Acts 16, verses 22 to 24, we read,

Acts 16:22–24

a mob quickly formed against Paul and Silas, and the city officials ordered

them stripped and beaten with wooden rods.

They were severely beaten, and then they were thrown into prison.

The jailer was ordered to make sure they didn't escape, so the jailer put them

into the inner dungeon and clamped their feet in the stocks.

And what happens next is that Paul and Silas, at about midnight,

they start singing praises to God.

Now, I just want to paint this picture because it's really intense.

So they were stripped and they were beaten.

That means there is no place on their body that would be comfortable to sit on a floor.

And what they did when they put their, in the stocks, they put them in,

they clamped their feet down. so they couldn't twist one way or another.

They were sitting on their buttocks and like, that's painful.

If you sit on your bottom for too long, like that's hard.

And then if you try to lay down with your back being beaten the way they were,

like that's going to be painful.

Every ounce I see in here is how painful this was, but that didn't stop them from praising God.

And that, to me, just always resonates because it is just so intense how drastic

the change for Paul was, going from someone who cast the lots to execute Stephen,

who was a follower of Jesus.

And Stephen said, look, I see Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Almighty.

That just blew their minds, and they just started hurling these rocks at him

because of how blasphemous that was to them.

And going from that to someone who is praising God after being beaten for the

name of Jesus, it's just absolutely remarkable how different he was.

So a guy by the name of J.P.

Moreland, in The Case for Christ, he says this about Paul's conversion.

Suddenly, he doesn't just ease off of Christians, but joins their movement.

How did this happen? Well, everyone agrees Paul wrote Galatians,

and he tells us himself in that letter what caused him to take a 180-degree

turn and become the chief proponent of the Christian faith.

By his own pen, he says he saw the risen Christ and heard Christ appoint him

to be one of his followers.

Remember, it's not the simple fact that Paul changed his views.

You have to explain how he had this particular change of belief that completely

went against his upbringing, how he saw the risen Christ in a public event that

was witnessed by others,

even though they didn't understand it, and how he performed miracles to back

up his claim to being an apostle.

So first, that first part of the quotation there is pointing to the historical evidence we have,

how drastic of a change this was from Saul of Tarsus persecuting the church

to Saul of Tarsus or Paul being persecuted for faith in what he was trying to eliminate.

It is such a drastic change that there are only a few things that are possible to really explain it.

And the most plausible one is that he really did encounter the risen Christ,

or at least that's what he believed.

And so that, for the purpose of our time together, that points to the historical

evidence of the resurrection of Jesus.

Now, the last part of this quote goes on to contrast what Paul did and his conversion

to what Muhammad did and his conversion to believe that Allah had spoken to

him and wrote the Koran down for him.

And the idea here is that Muhammad went into a cave by himself and says he had this revelation today.

And to contrast that with Paul, when he was on the way to Damascus and he had

this encounter with Jesus, there were people that were with him.

And while they didn't understand the words that Jesus was saying,

it sounded like thunder to them, they saw that something was happening.

They couldn't really explain it, but they saw that it had happened.

And then it was further clarified in Paul's life because he was able to perform miracles.

Reason that Paul got in trouble in the city of Philippi was because he cast

out a demon of a servant girl,

and the servant's master was mad because now the servant wasn't going to make

him money anymore because she couldn't tell people what was going on through demonic forces.

And so that was a miracle of itself.

Obviously, God was working through Paul in that moment.

It wasn't on Paul's power that the demon fled, but God used Paul and solidified

his testimony because of miracles like that, that God performed through him.

And so there's lots and lots that are going on here to point to this is true.

The evidence of Paul's change.

And if we really process through that. Why did he change?

It was because he had, he believed he had an encounter with the resurrected Christ.

And then we have other people experiencing, not the same thing,

but experiencing that moment and saying, yeah, something did happen there.

And then we have Paul being used by God to bring miracles and added clarification

that he really has God working in and through him.

And so that That's the context around Paul and his conversion and how that points

us in the way of believing that Jesus was the resurrected Christ.

So turning now to James, the evidence that we have for James is that he was

not a believer of Jesus before Jesus' death.

And we find this in one of the passages is John chapter 7, verses 1 through

John 7:1–5

5, where John records this.

After this, Jesus traveled around Galilee. He wanted to stay out of Judea where

the Jewish leaders were plotting his death.

But soon it was time for the Jewish festival of shelters. And Jesus's brothers

said to him, leave here and go to Judea where your followers can see your miracles.

You can't become famous if you hide like this. If you can do such wonderful

things, show yourself to the world for even his brothers didn't believe in him.

So the brothers are basically here mocking him, saying to him,

hey, if you want to become who you say you're supposed to become.

You've got to go to Jerusalem. That's where all of our religious leaders are.

You've just got to go there and show them what you can do.

They were mocking him in that way because they didn't believe in him.

Then we have, that's the strongest evidence we have, but in Luke chapter 8,

Luke 8 · chapter mention

we have another story of where Jesus's brothers and mom are coming to to talk to Jesus,

presumably to say, hey, just come on home. Things are getting messy out here.

You just really need to reset and think this through again.

And so in Luke 8, verses 19 through 21, we read, then Jesus's mother and brothers

Luke 8:19–21

came to see him, but they couldn't get to him because of the crowd.

Someone told Jesus, your mother and your brothers are standing outside and they want to see you.

Jesus replied, my mother and my brothers are all those who hear God's word and obey it.

And so you can imagine that if you have traveled a long distance,

they hear Jesus's mom, you're Jesus's brothers, and you hear your brother or

your son say these words like it can be disheartening to them.

This is secondary evidence that there was a conflict, at least,

in the household between Jesus' brothers and himself.

What we have here is from the Archaeological Study Bible, talking about this verse in particular.

It says, Jesus' brothers did not believe in him at this time.

Various interpretations of their relationship to Jesus arose in the early church.

Some said they were sons of Joseph by a previous marriage. That's according

to Epiphanius, or perhaps Jesus's cousins, which is what Jerome said.

The most natural conclusion, though, suggested by Helvidius,

is that they were the sons of Joseph and Mary, and as such, younger half-brothers of Jesus.

So, the idea of Jesus' brothers here who didn't believe in him at that time, the idea of Jesus'

brothers and mother going to him, the most likely thought on that is that they

were Mary and Joseph's sons, and because they were their sons.

That meant since Jesus shared Mary's DNA, but not Joseph's DNA,

they were their half-brothers.

All right, so that's the evidence that we have about the brothers of Jesus not believing in him.

But we do have biblical evidence that really names them, which helps us to get

to the point of who James is.

And so in Mark chapter 6, verses 1 through 3, we read, Jesus left that part

Mark 6:1–3

of the country and returned with his disciples to Nazareth, his hometown.

The next Sabbath, he began teaching in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.

They asked, where did he get all this wisdom and the power to perform such miracles?

Then they scoffed, he's just a carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of

James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon.

And his sisters live right here among us. They were deeply offended and refused to believe in him.

And so here we have a list of at least four brothers that Jesus had.

And one of those names is James, who we believe to be the half-brother of Jesus.

And the other reason we have this is because Paul writes about it in Galatians

1.19, where Paul says, the only other apostle I met at that time was James,

the Lord's brother.

So James was one of the most common Jewish names from 200 BC all the way up

past through Jesus's time.

It was a very famous name, and it actually, if you take it back to the Hebrew

roots, it's closer to the word Jacob than it is James.

And there's a whole history of how it got to James.

But basically, he was named after one of Abraham's grandsons by the name of Jacob.

And so James here is listed by Mark, and he's also listed here by Paul as brothers to Jesus.

And how we know that James became a follower of Jesus is because he says in

this verse, the only other apostle I met at that time.

So he had been following Jesus when Paul had come to Jerusalem and had a dialogue with him.

But we also see in the next chapter of Galatians, chapter 2,

Galatians 2:9

verse 9, that he is very highly regarded as a member of the church.

So it says, in fact, James, Peter, and John, who were known as pillars of the

church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers.

They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles while they continued their work with the Jews.

And so here we have proof from Paul's perspective that he was an apostle,

which means he was sent by Jesus.

He was a pillar in the church. He was somebody that other people recognized and lifted up.

And he is somebody who brought encouragement to Paul about his call from God.

Lastly, I guess we got two more here about trying to prove that James is really

a, became from someone who didn't believe in Jesus to someone who was really following after Jesus.

So in Acts chapter 15, that's known as the Jerusalem council,

Acts 15 · chapter mention

where Paul and Silas were bringing to the council the question of if the Gentiles

had to become Jewish first before they could be a follower of Jesus.

And after Paul and Silas gave their argument, this is what Luke records in Acts 15, 13.

When they had finished, James stood and said, brothers, listen to me.

So not only was he a pillar of the church according to Paul in Galatians 2.9,

but he was also someone who had the authority to stand up in a council and say,

guys, this is what we need to do.

He was a leader in the Jerusalem church, and the Jerusalem council is just proof of that.

Lastly, we have James' own admission of who he is in his letter to, that's called James.

He says, this letter is from James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And nothing puts it more plainly than that. James is saying, I am a follower of Jesus.

He tells me what to do, and then I go and do it.

So he went from not believing in Jesus prior to Jesus's death and resurrection

to the place where he was Jesus's servant after his death.

And again, we have to ask ourselves why, what would have caused this?

And it's in his own words that it's in Paul's words that James had this experience with Jesus.

Jesus appeared to James after his death and resurrection.

So this is what the cradle, the cross, and the crown says about James.

Even many scholars who are otherwise critical of traditional views now see this

letter as indeed from James the just.

Without compelling evidence to the contrary, the best understanding of the author

is in the fact that the author of the book of James is James, the son of Joseph,

the half-brother of Jesus.

So again, when he says a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,

it is Jesus's half-brother.

Then we have a quotation from the Archaeological Study Bible.

The author of this letter referred to himself as James, a servant of God and

of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The New Testament mentions five men who bore the name of James,

but tradition attributes the authorship of this letter to James,

the brother of the Lord, who had probably been favored with a special appearance

of the risen Christ and who from a very early date occupied a leading position

in the church at Jerusalem.

Paul named him first among the three pillars of the church, whom he saw on his

second visit to the city after his conversion,

and in Acts 15, James is described as the leader and chief spokesman of the apostolic council.

All that is known of him reflects that he was highly esteemed not only by Christians, but also by Jews.

According to Josephus, a Jewish historian, James was put to death by the high

priest during the period between the death of Festus and the arrival of his

successor, Albinus, in A.D. 62.

So again, James is somebody who did not believe in Jesus in his earthly life.

None of his brothers believed in him.

And after Jesus resurrected from the grave, he started to believe in him because

he more than likely had an encounter with the risen Jesus.

And that encounter propelled him to be a leading voice in the movement of Christianity.

And it ultimately led to his execution by the high priest.

And so, again, we have to ask ourselves,

why would somebody go from not believing in Jesus in his earthly ministry to

after his death, suddenly switching and saying, yeah, this is the Messiah.

And the most reasonable explanation is that he encountered the risen Christ.

I think this is the last quote for you, and it comes from The Case for Christ.

So the gospel tells us Jesus's family, including James, were embarrassed by

what he was claiming to be.

They didn't believe in him. They confronted him.

In ancient Judaism, it was highly embarrassing for a rabbi's family not to accept him.

Therefore, the gospel writers would have no motive for fabricating this skepticism if it weren't true.

Later, the historian Josephus tells us that James, the brother of Jesus,

who was a leader of the Jerusalem church, was stoned to death because of his belief in his brother.

Why did James' life change? Paul tells us the resurrected Jesus appeared to him.

There's no other explanation.

And so as we continue to look at the evidences for believing that the resurrection

of Jesus was an actual historical event,

we have just gone over two people who were not in Jesus's environment.

While he was on this planet, who did not believe in him and who were opposing

him, both of them, in their own way to either the followers of Jesus or to Jesus himself.

And when these two people claim what Paul claims in 1 Corinthians 15,

that they both had these experiences of seeing and interacting with the resurrected Jesus,

that's what propelled them to change.

It is a, again, we believe that the resurrection of Jesus is a historical event.

And in my estimation, these are two pieces of the house we are building that

is going to point to complete belief in the resurrection of Jesus.

It is not, it is a step of faith still because people just don't rise from the

dead. It's a step of faith, but it's not a leap of faith to believe that Jesus is.

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion on the change of attitudes

that we see in Saul of Tarsus and James, the brother of Jesus.

Moving from hostility and opposition to following Jesus is evidence that points

to both men encountering the resurrected Jesus,

adding one more piece of evidence in our quest to see if, historically speaking,

we can declare the evidence leads us to conclude Jesus rose from the grave.

In the next episode, we will look at the unique position the apostles were in.

They would have known if Jesus resurrected. If they had fabricated the story,

they would have been the ones who knew. And yet, they taught,

lived, and died, stating Christ arose.

Join us next time as we see what

this tells us historically about Jesus' resurrection. Have a great week.