Historical Evidence of Jesus' Resurrection: Women as First Eyewitnesses

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel podcast. My name is Jason and I am

the pastor of Faith Chapel.

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

evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

The specific subject for this episode is looking at what historians call the

criterion of embarrassment.

This criterion is something historians look for to help them understand the

plausibility of a story.

If a part of the story would be considered embarrassing by the author,

and they put it in the story anyway, this would lead historians to be more likely

to believe the events that transpired are true.

In this episode, we look at the

evidence of the criterion of embarrassment found in the gospel accounts.

Thanks for joining us today.

The resurrection of Jesus, and we've gone over this the first time when we talked

about what Paul said about it.

If Jesus didn't rise from the grave, then our faith is futile.

And we are still in our sins, and we as followers of Jesus are the most to be pitied of all the world.

And so Paul puts it pretty emphatically that it is a very important event,

that the resurrection of Jesus is a historical event.

And apologist Sean McDowell, he has a YouTube He has a YouTube channel that

I appreciate watching and learning from.

He is a professor at Biola University, and he puts it this way.

The resurrection of Jesus is the single most important event in the world,

in world history, if it is true.

And the emphasis there is that it's not a fairy tale that we want to believe

in. It is grounded, rooted in historical facts.

And because of that, it is the most important event in world history.

And we are uncovering more and more of the historical evidences that we have

to give us a firm foundation on our faith in Jesus.

And what we are covering today, Sean is stating that what we are covering today

is the biggest event, the biggest evidence to him of all the evidences.

Like this is to him the most important thing that grounds the resurrection of Jesus in history.

And so we're going to get to that in a second, but I'm going to recap where we have been.

We started with the death of Jesus and how through the beatings that he took

that day and through the crucifixion on the cross and the precision in which the Romans had died.

Gotten capital punishment to at that time, that there was no way he could survive.

And so it is refuting the swoon theory that Jesus just fainted on the cross

and he wasn't actually dead.

He didn't resurrect, he just revived.

Then we talked about the tomb of Jesus and the historical and archaeological

findings in that, that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is probably, likely,

the place where Jesus was buried.

And the archaeological evidence goes along with the idea of John that he presents

that it was in a garden and there were the seeds that were found there.

There were the small stone terraces or the walls that they found there that

helped them to say, yeah, this was truly a garden.

And then we also looked at the history of when the Roman emperor came in and

he leveled Jerusalem and he wanted to rebuild it into a pagan city.

The Hadrian, the emperor, he is the one that wanted to cover the place where

this place, where Christians were going to remember his burial.

And so that the historical as well as the archeological evidence provided for

that, that we are pretty sure that we know where the two.

Was. And then last week, we talked about how this story of the resurrection

started to spread in Jerusalem, which would have been the hardest place for

it to spread because people could have gone to the tomb.

It was a well-known event. And we also looked at the historical evidence of

the Roman historian Tacitus,

who said that this, and he called it a superstition, but the resurrection of

Jesus started in Judea, which is where Jerusalem was.

And so it's rooted and grounded in what Tacitus wrote and what the Bible wrote.

And it would have been the hardest place for this to start to gain traction

because they could have gone to the tomb.

And so through those evidences, we've built a foundation.

And now we get into the biblical story of the actual resurrection,

and we're going to look at the first eyewitnesses of the resurrection of Jesus.

And when we look at the witnesses, what we're going to see is that they didn't

experience when the breath came back into Jesus or when his heart started beating.

They experienced the after effects of that.

So it's not about the literal moment when Jesus rose. It's about the evidence

that Jesus is alive after he had died.

And so we're going to take a look at all four gospel narratives of the resurrection,

that first proclamation, what we call Easter Sunday, and what happened in those times.

And all four of them are going to share one very important characteristic that

we will get to after we get through these Bible verses.

So starting in Matthew, Matthew's resurrection and stories take place in chapter

28, and I'm going to read verses 1 through 10.

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week,

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended

from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.

His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow.

And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men.

But the angel said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek

Jesus, who was crucified.

He is not here, for he has risen, as he said.

Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that

he has risen from the dead.

And behold, he is going before you to Galilee, there you will see him, see I have told you.

So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy,

and ran to tell his disciples.

And behold, Jesus met them, and said, Greetings.

And they came up, and took hold of his feet, and worshipped him.

Then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid, go and tell my brothers to go to

Galilee, and there they will see me.

And so in Matthew's account, we get the story that on the early Sunday morning,

the Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were going to the tomb.

And what they were doing is more than likely they were going to put spices on

them as a way to honor the dead.

And Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea had already wrapped him.

They had already put spices in those wrappings, and they were just going to

do this to literally just honor Jesus.

They didn't have an embalming practice in Israel at that time.

And so Mary and Mary, they go and they encounter this angel,

and the angel tells them that Jesus is alive.

And then Jesus meets them, and they come up, they take his feet,

they fall down in front of him, prostrate, and they tell him that he is God by worshiping him.

And then Jesus says, go and tell my brothers, you're going to be my witnesses.

You're the first people to know, and I want you to go and tell my disciples.

So that's basically the story we get from Matthew.

In Mark chapter 16, verses 1 through 8, we read, When the Sabbath was passed.

Mark 16:1–8

Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother

of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint him.

And very early, on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.

And they were saying to one another, Who will roll away the stone for us from

the entrance of the tomb?

And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back. It was very large.

And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe.

And they were alarmed. And he said to them, Do not be alarmed.

You seek Jesus of Nazareth.

Who was crucified. He is risen. He is not here.

See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that

he is going before you to Galilee.

There you will see him, just as he told you.

And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them.

And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

So here in the story that Mark is presenting, he is stating that it was three

women that were going to the tomb, Mary, Mary, and Siloam, and they were coming to anoint the body.

They were coming to pay honor to Jesus, who was their master and is now deceased.

And when they got to the tomb, they saw the angel, this time inside of the tomb, and they were alarmed.

But the angel says to them, go tell his disciples, you are going to be the witnesses.

And at first, it appears that they just were so astonished with what they were

seeing. They weren't expecting this.

Dead people stay dead. And that's what they were anticipating anointing his body.

And so when they get this commission to go and tell the disciples about Jesus,

they are just shell-shocked.

And that's what I get from Mark saying these, presenting it in this way.

Then we come to Luke, and in Luke 24, we read, But on the first day of the week,

at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.

And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in,

they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling

apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground,

the men said to them, Why do you seek the living among the dead?

He is not here, but has risen.

Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must

be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.

And they remembered his words. And returning from the tomb, they told all these

things to the eleven and to all the rest.

Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James,

and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles.

But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

But Peter rose and ran to the tomb.

Stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves,

and he went home marveling at what had happened.

And so we, again, get a very similar story.

An angel comes and appears, and this time there is Mary, Mary.

Siloam, or Joanna, and then other women.

And so the multitude of witnesses here is growing, and they are all, in fact, females.

And so this becomes a very important thread throughout this story.

They go, according to Luke, they go, they tell the disciples,

and Peter rises, runs to the tomb, and wants to look at this for himself.

So, these are, as you can tell as we're reading through these,

there are certainly some nuances to each one of their tellings.

They're not exactly the same, and that is a very good thing.

When we look at a book called Cold Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace is the author.

He's saying these accounts and their differences are what drove him to follow Jesus.

Because as a cold case detective, he knows that witness testimony is never identical.

If it is, it's more than likely made up.

And so the nuances and difference we're seeing here is a mark of what he would

expect if these were truly different accounts, different people's perspectives of what happened.

And so it is a good thing that we can see the nuances here, and it lends to

historical evidence to believe what we're reading.

These are, again, four different accounts of Jesus, four different perspectives.

It's not just one source, the Bible. It is Matthew and his sources.

It is Mark, Luke, and John, and

the people that they talked to and collaborated to write these stories.

So John's account goes like this. Now on the first day of the week,

Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark and saw that the

stone had been taken away from the tomb.

So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus

loves, and said to them, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don't

know where they have laid him.

So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the two.

Both of them running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.

And stooping in to look, he saw the linen cloth lying there, but he did not go in.

Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb.

He saw the linen cloth lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus'

head, not lying with the linen cloth, but folded up in a place by itself.

Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in.

And he saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the scripture,

that he must rise from the dead.

Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood weeping outside

the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb.

And she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain,

one at the head and one at the feet.

They said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? She said to them,

They have taken away my Lord, and I don't know where they have laid him.

Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?

Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, Sir, if you have carried

him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.

Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him in Aramaic,

Rabboni, which means teacher.

Jesus said to her, Don't cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.

But go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your

Father, to my God and your God.

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord,

and that he had said these things to her.

So again, more nuance in the story and the telling of what actually happened,

but the facts still remain the same.

Both Matthew and John here clarify that it is Mary Magdalene that was there.

Mark and Luke also give credence to this story, and she is the one who goes

and tells the disciples, according to John, that she has seen the Lord.

And she is the first one to go and say, hey, the tomb is empty.

I don't know where they have taken his body.

And so both of these accounts show, both of these stories in John's account

show that Mary is the primary source, the primary evidence,

primary witness to the resurrection of Jesus.

And in the first century, it would have been a very shocking thing for Matthew,

Mark, Luke, and John to say that the first witnesses were women.

This was a very patriarchal culture in Israel in the first century,

and it was just not something that people would have given credence to.

We've already looked at Peter's sermon at Pentecost.

And in that first public sermon, he does not mention who found the empty tomb.

He just says, and we are the witnesses of this.

And the reason for that is if he had proclaimed, if he would have said that

it was Mary, there would have been a hesitancy to accept that story.

And because Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John present it in this way,

this provides us a beautiful piece of evidence to the historical resurrection of Jesus.

And it's what historians call the criterion of embarrassment.

So the criterion of embarrassment is one of the tools used by historians to

determine the legitimacy of the claims presented.

The logic behind the criterion is that writers will attempt to make their cause

look as attractive as possible. And.

If the presented event contains details that are embarrassing to the writer,

the earliest leaders, the founder, or the cause, then it could be said that the event is authentic.

And this comes from Cross-Examined, which is an organization that is apologetics-driven

for Christianity, and the guy who wrote that is Brian Chilton.

And this explains that a criterion of embarrassment is adding real-life things

that would be embarrassing to the person that you were writing about.

So when we look through the Bible, we have lots and lots of examples of embarrassing

things that had happened. I think of David and his affair with Bathsheba.

I think of like Noah getting drunk after the flood and his one son kind of exposing him.

And these are just facets of the story that would fit into this criterion of embarrassment.

This is what historians use to see whether or not an event is authentic.

And the reason that this can be said of the women eyewitnesses is because of

what the culture was like at that time.

So from that same article, Brian Chilton at Cross Examined, he writes,

the testimony of women did not hold the bearing that the testimony of men of in the first century.

Thus, if one is inventing a story, women would certainly not be used as the first,

Yet all four Gospels note that it was the women, particularly Mary Magdalene,

who first witnessed the risen Jesus.

For this reason, the testimony of women serves as an embarrassing detail that

speaks to the authenticity of the resurrection event.

So the reason, and it is bizarre from our 21st century worldview,

but back then the testimony did not count as much if women were stating it.

Eyewitness testimony didn't mean much if it was a woman who was presenting it.

And so when Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were writing this in the first century

to tell the story of Jesus in written form, including this, people would have scoffed at it.

People would have been like, no, no, no, I cannot believe that. It's a women.

Women were the first eyewitnesses of that. How can this be something that you would use?

And so this lends to the idea that because it's a part, it's an embarrassing

thing for the gospel writers, the authenticity is skyrocketing.

The probability of it being correct is greater because it is the testimony of these women.

And that's really cool evidence for us.

All throughout Scripture, there are stories of people trying to follow God very

poorly, and they make mistakes, and they are very authentic and open about these mistakes.

The writers of the Bible are certainly willing to share some embarrassing characteristics

of the people that they are writing about.

And this fits into that mold.

And the idea here is if the gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke,

and John wanted people to believe this story, they would have,

and it was make-believe,

they were going to make different witnesses be the first to encounter the risen people.

So, in the first century, the patriarchal culture was quite severe.

In the second century, about 100 years after Jesus died, there was a rabbi by

the name of Eliezer ben Herkanis.

So, he was from the second century. He was a Jewish scholar.

And in the Talmud, which is a 63 volume work of intricate Jewish legal debates

composed from the 2nd to the 6th century, these words are credited to him.

The words of the Torah should be burned rather than entrusted to women.

So the idea here is that women were second class.

Women were not even, according to this rabbi should be able to encounter the

Torah, which are the first five books of the Bible, Genesis,

Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the books of Moses.

And this rabbi was so severe and harsh in this, he thought the words of God

in the Torah would be better burned than entrusted to women.

In an article from the Jewish Women's Authority, I found this statement.

So the obligation of Torah study is one of the most important Jewish commandments,

but women have long been excluded from this important realm.

Although debates existed about whether women were exempted or excluded from Torah study,

Rabbi Eliezer's restrictive opinion was widely accepted and influenced subsequent rulings.

So the idea that women should not be entrusted with the words of God.

Had plout with other people in his generation and was influencing other people.

And this is just presented to show you that this is what they thought of women being.

Then. In a study Bible I have, the NIV Cultural Background Study Bible, I found this quote.

It says, although a few philosophic schools had or permitted some women disciples,

they are almost unknown among Jewish schools for the study of the Torah.

Persian and other cultures to the east of the Roman Empire had some strict protocols for women,

but even Roman philosophic teachers who welcomed women students,

such as Musonius Rufus.

Sometimes felt compelled to

explain that intellectual training would aid women in domestic pursuits.

So when women were allowed to study, when they were allowed to have a rabbi

and under these strict rules and guidelines,

while they were able to study and learn about philosophical pursuits,

the idea that their rabbis were giving them is that this is going to help you

be a domestic housewife.

This is going to help you raise children. This is going to help you with the

duties that you're going to have in your household.

They never expected women to be able to go out there and teach other people these things.

Again, this is the culture around the time of the disciples and the writings of the New Testament.

So the evidence is pretty clear that women were regarded as second-class citizens.

They weren't expected. They had different learning facilities.

They had different expectations upon them, and they were not anticipated to

be good witnesses for legal matters.

So getting back to Sean McDowell and what he says about the criterion of embarrassment is this.

Now, all four Gospels report that women discovered the empty tomb.

We read that in our modern culture and we don't think twice about it.

But in that patriarchal culture, a woman was not typically educated the same way as a man.

They were looked down upon. And so put yourself in the position of the Gospel writers.

If they're inventing a story of an empty tomb and they want to convince people

this is true, who are the least likely witnesses they would invent?

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

To be persuasive. And the answer is they obviously wouldn't invent women.

That would be counterproductive. So the reason they report women, the most likely reason,

is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John heard a story that they believed and they're

passing on what they think is true.

So this is his reason why he thinks this is one of probably the strongest individual

evidence that there is for the historical resurrection of Jesus,

that the eyewitnesses are women and what the culture saw in women was vastly

different from what our culture sees in women.

And so they were not, they were not educated the same way, and they were just

looked down upon in society.

Lastly, I have a quote from William Lane Craig, and he kind of solidifies everything

we've been talking about.

He says, women were on a very low rung of the social ladder in first century Palestine.

There are old rabbinic sayings that said, let the words of the law be burned

rather than delivered to women.

And blessed is he whose children are male, but woe to him whose children are female.

Women's testimony was regarded as so worthless that they weren't even allowed

to serve as legal witnesses in a Jewish court of law.

In light of this, it's absolutely remarkable that the chief witnesses to the

empty tomb are these women who were friends of Jesus.

Any later legendary account would have certainly portrayed male disciples as discovering the tomb.

Peter or John, for example. The fact that women are the first witnesses to the

empty tomb is most plausibly explained by the reality that, like it or not,

they were the discoverers of the empty tomb.

This shows that the gospel writers faithfully recorded what happened,

even if it was embarrassing.

This bespeaks the historicity of this tradition rather than its legendary status.

And so he kind of puts a stamp on it. Like he's saying,

like, if you're looking at it historically, if you know about the criterion of embarrassment,

if you see how historians look at ways to validate whether or not what happened

is an actual event or not,

this fits right into that category.

The idea here that he speaks of, of the historicity of this tradition rather

than its legendary status is in the 1800s,

there was a movement to say that we don't know who the historical Jesus was because of all of the,

because this just seems too good to be true.

Like people don't rise from the dead, people, miracles don't really happen,

that sort of thing in educated circles that was gaining a lot of traction in the 1800s.

And so when William Lane Craig is saying legendary status, that's what he's referring to.

This idea that's still in academic circles today is that these stories were

written much later and that they evolved over time into more supernatural things

instead of what is based in history.

But according to William Lane Craig here, the idea that women are the first

eyewitnesses refute that legendary status.

People would not have made this up because it just wouldn't have been accurate in that timeframe.

They would have said Peter or John were the ones that found the empty tomb or

one of the other disciples.

Maybe it was Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea, but not Mary Magdalene,

not the other Mary, not Salome, not Joanna.

And that's the evidence that we have that Jesus did rise from the tomb,

that the gospel writers wrote down what they believed.

What they heard, and what they knew to be true.

And it today speaks to us of its validity because it falls into that category

of the criterion of embarrassment. Are there any thoughts or questions on any of this?

I don't know how many times I've read...

The different Gospels accounts. And this is the first time that it really hit

me that there was a description of the stone being rolled away in the presence of others,

which would have been, I mean, I can understand the terrifying,

but then it rings to mind then, because I always had this vision of Jesus kind

of, power kind of throwing the stone out.

But the soldiers being there and the women witnessing it, Jesus kind of just

like walked out of the tomb like he walked into the room.

Yeah, I heard it put this way, that the stone wasn't rolled back for Jesus to get out.

The stone was rolled back so the women could see it was empty.

I think it's interesting that cultural relationships play such a big part in

the story and in our understanding of the story.

I'm reminded of the movie we saw that analyzes a wedding.

A Judean wedding, and draws the parallels between the pattern of the wedding

and all of the things that Jesus was teaching his disciples.

It's a fascinating, fascinating comparison because the whole wedding idiom was

a culturally based thing.

When you understand the wedding and the culture around the wedding and the lamps

and the wicks and all that stuff and getting into the party before the door

gets closed and whatnot,

all of that was a cultural idiom about weddings that was perfectly mirrored

by what Jesus was teaching his disciples. And all of a sudden here again we have.

A huge cultural element, women being whatever, and Jesus choosing them to be

the ones that found him, to be the ones that discovered that he had,

in fact, risen from the dead.

It's totally antithetical to anything that you would expect,

but he was defying that cultural norm.

So there's a lot that is being said in feminist circles about how the Bible

is patriarchal, especially Paul.

People in feminist circles are not a big fan of Paul. And I saw an article recently

about how much Paul did include women in his ministry.

In his ending of the letters, he mentioned women.

Aquila and Priscilla, a husband and wife, were really close to him,

and how he was countercultural in a positive way towards women compared to what the rest of society was.

And so Jesus, I see that starting with Jesus here, where he welcomed these people into his entourage.

And according to Luke chapter 8, they actually provided money out of their own

Luke 8 · chapter mention

pocketbooks to help fund the ministry that Jesus was doing.

It was remarkable for his period. It's like a preamble to the massive cultural

changes that would be created by Jesus' ministry. I mean, look at us.

The cultural change is just night and day. And it's like that was the beginning.

That was the pre-animal. That was the beginning of the story.

I love the fact that women discovered the tomb.

I love the fact that Jesus brought women into his ministry the way he did.

You know, you think about the Bible and how God works and his sense of humor.

He takes Jonah, the one Obey, and he's swallowed by a fish, which if you read

the Bible as a book, you would think that's pretty far-fetched.

You look at Paul, an anti-Christian, turns into one of the best,

probably the best Christian.

You look at Noah that builds the ark that probably everybody made fun of.

All these things, if you read it, you would think that—and then you look at

David. the young man that slays Goliath.

And now you look at women, God takes all the people that you would not expect to do his work.

He doesn't. So it just shows kind of his sense of humor that,

you know what? You're going to say it's not going to work, but I'm going to prove you wrong.

But I find that kind of, I just kind of find that interesting that the least,

when we set back as a human being and we think this is the least likely thing

to happen, that's exactly what God does.

Amen. Yeah. And that's a beautiful testimony of who he is and how strong, powerful he is.

And I still have a hard time wrestling with the idea that the all-powerful,

all-knowing, everywhere present all at the same time,

God wants to be in a relationship with us and wants to partner with us to do his work down here.

It just blows my mind. Having that walk with God, talking to Him every day,

engaging with Him in His Word, learning constantly about Him is the thrill of

our existence because He wants that for us. It's beautiful.

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion on how the disciples writing

that the women were the first to find the tomb empty show a higher probability

of this event being accurate because it would have embarrassed the first believers of Jesus.

This is just one more layer of discovery as we look to find out if,

historically speaking, we

can say the evidence leads us to conclude that Jesus rose from the grave.

In the next episode, we will look at the historical evidence of the eyewitnesses

themselves and see what they shared with others about Jesus' resurrection. Have a great day.