Historical Evidence of Jesus' Resurrection: Jerusalem’s Test

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

and I am the pastor of Faith Chapel.

This is the third 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 the place where the story

of Jesus' resurrection was first told, Jerusalem.

This would be the hardest location to spread this news, if it were not true.

Anyone wanting to show you it wasn't true would simply take you to the tomb

of Jesus and his dead body.

Does the historical evidence, then, back up this claim that it was spread in Jerusalem first?

Thanks for joining us today.

Last week, we talked about the historical and the archaeological evidence of

the tomb where it is likely that Jesus was placed due to the evidence that we went over last week.

And using the passion story of Jesus.

His trial, his death, his crucifixion, his burial, and then his resurrection

as like the framework for us progressing here,

today is going to be very much on the heels of the place of Jesus's burial,

the place of his, where he was laid to rest.

So as we talk about that,

one piece of evidence to defend the authenticity of Jesus's resurrection comes

from the claim that Jesus died,

was buried, and rose again in Jerusalem in a historical city.

And that this is the first place where the proclamation of Jesus's resurrection was stated.

What that means is that in the area where the people had the most evidence to

combat it, if they had it.

Is the place where this started to grow, is the place where this started,

this movement that became Christianity really began to flourish.

And so we're going to look at the evidence in Scripture and outside of Scripture

on where Jesus was buried.

Mainly not the exact location, just the general location of that.

And then from there, move on to what is recorded only in Matthew,

which is the guards that are around the tomb and what that states or what evidence

that brings to us for belief in the resurrection of Jesus.

And the idea is to build a case.

Each and every one of the evidences presented in by itself would be pretty interesting to look at.

But the cumulative case of all the evidence that we have to believe in the resurrection

of Jesus that points us to follow after what Jesus teaches, that's the basis for this.

It's not just one fact or another, and hopefully there will be some interesting

facts that really stick out to you.

But it's not just one of those. It's the cumulative case of the historical evidence

for the resurrection of Jesus.

So we're going to start by looking at where the Bible proclaims Jesus was died

and buried and where the proclamation of Jesus's resurrection was first announced.

And this all points to Jerusalem.

And before we begin getting into the verses in front of us, I just want to be

very clear. There is nowhere in the Bible where it says that Jesus was not crucified

and buried in Jerusalem.

The gospel accounts all say that they were at the high priest's house that's

inside the walls of Jerusalem.

The Matthew and Mark proclaim where Jesus was arrested was on the Garden of Gethsemane.

Luke says that's the Mount of Olives. And then John says that's across the Kidron Valley.

These are the different ways that they describe it. and all of them are pointing to the same location.

Just two of them are very specific with the Garden of Gethsemane.

Luke is more broad with the Mount of Olives, and John is even broader with just

across the Kidron Valley.

And so all of these point to Jesus's arrest, his trials, his death and burial, all being in Jerusalem.

And so when we process through that, when we understand that,

we then need to go to, all right, well, where was Jesus first proclaimed?

And was this widely known in all of Jerusalem?

And those are the verses that we are going to be going through now.

We're going to look specifically at one source here, Luke, and then Acts,

which is also written by Luke.

And we're going to progress through these according to this.

Luke is not actually an eyewitness. He's just someone who has gathered eyewitness testimony.

So through his gathering of eyewitness testimony, this is what we encounter.

Starting in Luke chapter 24, verses 17 and 18, and this is when Jesus is walking

Luke 24:17

with two men on the road to Emmaus.

And as they are walking, they don't know it's Jesus.

Who he is is being hidden from them somehow.

We're not told how, But this is what happens in their interaction.

So, in Luke 24, starting in verse 17, we read, He, that's Jesus,

Jesus asked them, What are you discussing so intently as you walk along?

They stopped short, sadness written across their faces.

Then one of them, Cleopas, replied, You must be the only person in Jerusalem

who hasn't heard about all the things that have happened there the last few days.

So this is on Resurrection Sunday, and Cleopas is saying, all right,

you're the only one in Jerusalem who hasn't heard about the death of Jesus,

his crucifixion, about his burial.

And then later on, he's going to say, and some of the women of our group surprised

us today by coming and saying that the tomb was empty.

These are the things that he is talking about here. And so what we can glean

from this is that Jerusalem as a whole,

from the time Jesus entered on what we call Palm Sunday to the time where he

was crucified and buried,

these events were not kept in secret.

They were widely known across the Jerusalem and Judea area.

And so that's what we can get from that first set of verses.

Then we're moving to the book of Acts.

When Jesus appears to them.

He commands them in Acts 1 verses 4 and 5.

Acts 1:4

He says to them, do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he has promised.

As I told you before, John baptized with water, but in just a few days,

you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

And so Luke is recording the testimony that Jesus told them,

don't leave the city, be in Jerusalem.

Again, this is the same city where he was crucified, where he was buried.

And so this would be the hardest place to spread a lie about Jesus because people

are going to be able to say, all right, well, let's go and look.

All right, he's right here.

Like we know where his tomb is. Let's investigate it for ourselves.

And so in Jerusalem, this is where the disciples, the apostles are told to wait.

Then when the Holy Spirit comes on the day of Pentecost, interest.

Then they go out. They get filled with the Holy Spirit.

They go out on this above-ground patio.

I can't even think of that. Balcony. That's what I'm trying to think of.

This balcony, they go out there, and they start proclaiming.

Peter, specifically, starts proclaiming the good news about Jesus.

So in Acts chapter two, verses 23 to 24, we read, but God knew what would happen.

And this is during Peter's Pentecost sermon, but God knew what would happen.

And his prearranged plan was carried out when Jesus was betrayed.

With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed him to a cross and killed him.

But God released him from the horrors of death and raised him back to life,

for death could not keep him in its grip.

So he is putting culpability on the people of Jerusalem.

You were there. You experienced it. You were in the crowd shouting,

crucify him, crucify him.

And he proclaims here clearly that he is risen from the dead,

that God brought him back to life.

And so this, again, is presented in front of people of Jerusalem.

Then in Acts 2.32, Peter goes on to say, God raised Jesus from the dead,

and we are all witnesses of this.

So the disciples and those that were with him were on this balcony.

They were the ones proclaiming the word of God, and they were the ones who were

speaking in languages where the people in the crowd who were there for the festival

of Pentecost could hear it in their own language.

This is who are witnesses of these things.

And so, again, they're not just saying, go and believe this.

They're saying, they're the witnesses. Ask us questions.

Come and investigate it for yourself. It's done in this city.

Let's look at the evidence in front of us.

And when they looked at the evidence, Acts 2.41 states this,

Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day, about 3,000 in all.

People who were able to go and see the tomb for themselves,

people who were able to recall from just 50 days prior to the events surrounding

the Passover celebration where Jesus was crucified and buried.

They were the ones who could investigate this for themselves.

It would be the hardest place for the gospel to spread because the evidence

would be right in front of them.

And so this is why the burial place of Jesus is so important.

It leads us to the evidence that if it grows and flourishes in the place where Jesus died.

Then more than likely, they would have investigated it for themselves,

and they would have found out pretty quickly if it was true or not.

So, when we look at the Bible, it is clear that it started in Jerusalem.

The Pentecost sermon was in Jerusalem.

The disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem.

It's not until Acts chapter 9,

Acts 9 · chapter mention

after Stephen's death, that the church spreads beyond Jerusalem because of the

persecution that arises as the result of Stephen's martyrdom.

And so this is where it began.

But we don't just have to take the words of scripture because we do have a Roman

historian who proclaims this same thing.

His name is Tacitus And in his document called the Annals in chapter 15,

verse 44, there we find this quote.

And again, he's a Roman. He's not a follower of Jesus, but he will in this statement

clarify where the Christianity began.

And he is writing roughly 100 years after Jesus's death. So he is going back

through history, looking at the testimonies, and this is what he writes.

Therefore, to squelch the rumor, and this is the rumor that Nero set Rome on fire, which he did do,

but to squelch that rumor, Nero created scapegoats and subjected to the most

refined tortures, those whom the common people called Christians,

a group hated for their abominable crimes.

Their name comes from Christ, who during the reign of Tiberius had been executed

by the procurator Pontius Pilate.

Suppressed for the moment, the deadly superstition broke out again,

not only in Judea, the land which originated this evil, but also in the city of Rome,

where all sorts of horrendous and shameful practices of every part of the world

converge and are fervently cultivated.

All right, so it takes some figuring out to decipher what he is saying here,

but where he says, suppressed for the moment, the deadly superstition broke out again.

He is talking about the belief that Jesus rose from the dead.

This is what he calls a superstition. And he says it was suppressed for a moment,

but it broke out again in Judea, the land which originated this evil.

The story of Jesus's resurrection started in Jerusalem,

according to a Roman historian who lived in, I think it was 100 to 165 AD,

so somewhere around 100 or so years after Jesus's death.

He says, it began in the region of Judea, which Jerusalem is a part of.

And so we have the Bible saying it started in Jerusalem, and we have Tacitus

confirming that it started in Jerusalem.

And again, I can't say it enough, but this is the hardest place for it to begin

because anyone could have investigated it for themselves.

And it leads us to two, in my mind, there might be more, but as I was racking

my brain, I could only think of two, two possible explanations for why it continued to grow.

Because the body was not in the tomb, either somebody took the body or Jesus walked out of the tomb.

Those are the only two reasons that I can comprehend in my own brain for why the tomb would be empty.

And to look at whether or not it is plausible to think that Jesus walked out

of the tomb instead of the body being stolen, we turn to the gospel according to Matthew.

And in Matthew 27 and Matthew chapters 27 and 28,

Matthew 27 · chapter mention

we get two different stories, two story, one story that builds upon another

about the guarding of the tomb where Jesus was laid.

And he is the only one that records this message in the four gospels,

the only one that proclaims this.

And so we do only have one eyewitness of this.

And we're going to take a look at whether or not it's a believable thing that

Matthew puts in here that it was guarded or not.

Historically speaking, I should mention that. But in Matthew chapter 27, verses 62 to 66,

Matthew 27:62–66

we read, the next day on the Sabbath, the leading priests and Pharisees went to see Pilate.

They told him, so this is the day after Jesus's death.

They told him, sir, we remember what that deceiver once said while he was still

alive. After three days, I will rise from the dead.

So we request that you seal the tomb until the third day.

This will prevent his disciples from coming and stealing his body and then telling

everyone he was raised from the dead.

If that happens, we'll be worse off than we were at first. Pilate replied,

take the guards and secure it the best you can.

So they sealed the tomb and posted guards to protect it.

So Matthew says the Pharisees understood that Jesus claimed to be able to raise himself from the dead.

And the verses that I remember from this are when he compares himself to the

prophet Jonah or says, this is the sign, only sign you're going to get that

of the prophet Jonah, who spent three days and three nights in the belly of that great fish.

Likewise, the son of man is going to spend three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

That's the proclamation that he said to the Pharisees. And that seems to be

what they are remembering at this moment.

So they wanted the burial. They wanted the tomb sealed.

They wanted it, guards posted around it, that sort of thing,

to make sure no one stole the body.

So to understand what is happening in the first century, there is a Christian

apologist by the name of William Lane Craig,

and he gave this description of what the burial place and tomb would have looked

like in the first century, according to the archaeological evidence that we.

So he says, there was a slanted groove that led down to a low entrance,

and a large disc-shaped stone was rolled down this groove and lodged into place across the door.

A smaller stone was then used to secure the disc.

Although it would be easy to roll this big disc down the groove,

it would take several men to roll the stone back up in order to reopen the tomb.

In that sense, it was quite secure.

So archaeologically speaking, what they have found is that they had put rocks,

they had put these large stone, he described it as a disc in front of the cave

openings to make it secure so

that grave robbers and other people wouldn't come in and steal the body.

This is what the archaeological evidence that we have found has stated.

And in order to make sure that the disciples didn't come and take the body out

and proclaim that he had risen from the dead when he really hadn't.

Soldiers were also dispatched to this area, according to Matthew's story.

Then in chapter 28, after the resurrection, after Jesus appears to Mary and

to the women who were around the tomb, Matthew records this in verses 11 through 15.

As the women were on their way to tell the people about Jesus' resurrection,

some of the guards went into the city and told the leading priests what had happened.

A meeting with the elders was called, and they decided to give the soldiers a large bribe.

They told the soldiers, You must say the disciples came during the night while

we were sleeping, and they stole his body. If the governor hears about it,

we'll stand up for you so you won't get in trouble.

So the guards accepted the bribe and said what they were told to say.

Their story spread widely among the Jews, and they still tell it today.

So the idea here behind Matthew stating this is that there was a conspiracy

to cover up the earthquake, and I don't know if they saw Jesus walk out of the tomb or not.

If they did, I would be very surprised that they would even go back into the

city, but they could have, and they went back in the story.

They went back into the city, and they told this story to the leading priests

and the Pharisees and they said, all right, we're going to give you money.

We're going to satisfy Rome because if they were not doing what they were supposed

to do, if they were ignoring their duties as a Roman soldier,

they would have been executed.

So they had to pay the Roman soldiers off.

Then they had to lie to Pilate and the Roman government about what was really going Again,

this is the only description of this we see in the Bible, that the soldiers

were there posted to keep the body from being stolen.

But we do have an early Christian writer from the second century.

His name is Justin Martyr. And as you can guess, that's where we get the term martyr from.

So he was executed for his faith in Jesus.

But he was a prolific writer.

And in one of his writings, Conversation with Trifo, which was written about AD 135.

He goes on to this hypothetical dialogue between him and a Jewish person in

trying to create an apologetics for Christianity,

so a defense of the Christian faith.

And in this interaction, this is what we read written by Justin Martyr in A

Conversation with Trifo.

As I said before, you have sent chosen and ordained men throughout all the world

to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus,

a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified.

But his disciples stole him by night from the tomb where he was laid when unfastened

from the cross and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven.

So in Justin's hypothetical conversation with Trifo, Trifo is responding in this way.

And the story that they were stating as early, as late as 135 AD.

Was the story that Jesus's body had been stolen by the disciples.

So this story picks up some historical credence because Justin uses this as

an argument for why Trifo doesn't believe in the resurrection of Jesus.

And Matthew's account here gets more believable because of this.

Another way that we can examine what Matthew said here is taking it through

the atypical response about what,

why Matthew would proclaim this if it wasn't true.

So we have in, I think this is William Lane Craig again.

He has a blog, and this comes right from that blog.

So it says, In the first place, it is unlikely that the Christians would invent

a fiction like the guard, which everyone, especially their Jewish opponents,

would realize never existed.

Lies are the most feeble sort of apologetic there could be.

Since the Jewish-Christian controversy no doubt originated in Jerusalem,

then it is hard to understand how Christians could have tried to refute their

opponent's charge with a falsification which would have been plainly true,

since there were no guards about who claimed to have been stationed at the tomb.

But secondly, it is even more improbable that confronted with this palpable lie,

the Jews would, instead of exposing and denouncing it as such,

proceed to create another lie, even stupider,

that the guard had fallen asleep while the disciples broke into the tomb and

absconded with the body.

If the existence of the guard were false, then the Jewish polemic would never

have taken the course that it did.

And so this is how he explains it in a conversation between a Christian and a Jew.

So he would say the Christian says, the Lord is risen. He has been resurrected from the dead.

The Jew would say, no, his disciples stole his body away.

Christian would come back and say the guard at the tomb would have prevented any such theft.

And the Jew would say, no, his disciples stole his body while the guard slept.

Then the Christian would say the chief priest bribed the guard to say this.

So that's how the argument would go in a very simple formula there.

Jesus is risen. The Jew would say, no, the disciples stole the body.

And that is the belief that the Jews had even all the way through into the time

of Justin Martyr when he's having this hypothetical conversation with Trifo.

But the Christian would say the guard at the tomb would have prevented any such

theft. And if there wasn't a guard at the tomb.

Then what the Jew would say would be, hold on a second.

There were no guards at the tomb because they were there.

They were encountering it. They could have intervened in this way.

Just like, no, his body is still in the grave.

Go and look at it. They would have been like, no, no, no, no. We were there.

Like there was no guard at the tomb.

And so this would have been their reply.

And what William Lane Craig is saying is that to combat what the Christians

are saying, the guard at the tomb would have prevented any such theft,

they're making up an even more ridiculous lie and saying, no,

the Roman guards were derelict of duty.

They didn't do what they were supposed to do. They deserved to be executed,

but they were being paid off.

And so the disciples stole his body away while the guards were sleeping.

So William Lane Craig sees a lot of.

Rationality in this story because of, we would see documentation,

especially in Jewish documents that were later than this,

like the Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud and other writings of the Jewish people,

they would be refuting and saying, no, no, no, our best sources say there were no guards at the tomb.

We do not have any evidence for that. And it brings credence to what Matthew is saying here.

So that leads to one archaeological find that was found supposedly in,

Nazareth. It was found in Nazareth. At least this is where the guy who found it was.

It's called the Diatagma Kiseros.

And what this is, it's a document that is written.

I can't remember what it is written on, but it's written in a long rock or something like that.

It's written and it is declaring that if you get caught stealing from a grave, it's a capital offense.

So let me read through this doc.

This is from the Archaeological Study Bible, and then we actually have the edict of...

Is talking about. So it says, the Roman concern for safeguarding tombs is reflected

in an imperial inscription bearing the title Diatagma Kiseros,

acquired at Nazareth during the 19th century.

So the date I saw was around 1880, this was found.

So the marble slab, that's what it was made of. The marble slab containing 21

lines of Greek text dates from between 50 BC and 8050.

So pausing right there, it could have been before the time of,

it could have been before the death of Jesus, but it could have been right after the time of Jesus.

So it's kind of in that sweet spot that we don't know exactly if it is from this era.

So it goes on to say the text attests to the sanctity of tombs and threatens

with capital punishment any who would defile a tomb by removing the body.

Scholars have considered the possibility that in light of the disturbances between

Jews and early Christians over what happened to the body of Jesus,

the diatagma caeseros may reflect an early Roman response.

Although the present state of research does not allow for absolute certainty,

the presence of this authentic decree lends historical credibility to Matthew's account.

So basically what's that saying is that this marble slab with these 21 lines

of Greek writing declare that it is a capital offense to take anything out of a grave.

It is punishable by death if you do this.

And there is the possibility that this has come about after the death of Jesus.

Remember the timing of it. It could be before, we don't know,

but it's very fascinating that it's dating to around the time of Jesus and that

it's found in his hometown of Nazareth.

Let's go on and read it. This declaration has one other piece of evidence that

lends to the credibility that it happened after the death of Jesus and in response

to that, but it is not for sure.

So this is an edict of Caesar.

It is my decision concerning graves and tombs,

whoever has made them for religious observances of parents or children or household

members, that these remain undisturbed forever.

But if anyone legally charges that

another person has destroyed or has in any manner extracted those who have been

buried or has moved with wicked intent those who have been buried to other places

committing a crime against them or has moved sepulcher sealing stones against such a person,

I order that a judicial tribunal be created just as is done concerning the gods

and human religious observances.

Even more so, it will be obligatory to treat with honor those who have been entombed.

You are absolutely not to allow anyone to move those who have been entombed.

But if someone does, I wish that violator to suffer capital punishment under

the title of Tomb Breaker.

So that's a translation of the Greek words by Clyde Billington.

And the really fascinating thing that focuses this in the Judean area is the

term sepulcher sealing stones.

Now, the way that we described what was going on in the Middle East,

William Lane Craig was talking about how this stone was slid down a groove.

This was unique, archaeologically speaking, to those in Israel.

Outside of Israel, they have not found graves or tombs like this anywhere else in archaeology.

And so we see here that it more than likely refers to the Israeli way of burying.

And again, the timing, like we can't be for certain,

we can't be for sure, but it lends credence to the idea that there was this

Jewish and Christian infighting about whether or not Jesus's body was removed,

whether it was stolen or not.

And this leads credence to what Matthew was saying.

This is evidence that supports his declaration that guards were placed at the tomb.

And so this is the idea of the breadth of the archaeological evidence that we have.

When we look at it all together, just confirming what we believe.

So this is from this Answers in Genesis blog.

It says, burial procedures by Jews in Israel during the first century BC through

the first century AD were unique compared to others in the Roman Empire.

Upper class citizens often had tombs cut from limestone in which the body would

be placed until it decayed.

Then the bones would be collected and placed in an ossuary. Most relevant to

this study is the fact that sepulchre sealing stones have only been found in Israel.

Billington, the guy whose definition or the translation we read,

Billington added that there is no archaeological or documentary evidence that

tombs with sepulchre sealing stones were ever used by Gentiles in the Roman Empire.

And this leads William Lane Craig to declare, When you read the New Testament,

there's no doubt that the disciples sincerely believed the truth of the resurrection,

which they proclaimed to their deaths.

The idea that the empty tomb is the result of some hoax, conspiracy,

or theft is simply dismissed today.

And so when you look at scholarship who is legitimate, who is looking at the

evidence and trying to figure out really what happened back then,

no one uses the argument that the body was stolen. It wasn't a hoax.

It's not a conspiracy. It's not a theft.

All of those are simply dismissed by legitimate scholars to this day.

And not all those scholars believe that Jesus rose from the dead,

but they dismiss this, the idea of the body being taken by the disciples as not realistic.

And so again, it's the mountain of evidence, the body of the evidence that we

are presenting in this series is meant to solidify and to build us up.

And I am under the impression that God does ask us to take steps of faith,

but he doesn't ask us to take leaps of faith.

He doesn't want blind leaps. He wants us to trust him based upon the evidence.

And as we unfold the historical evidence of the resurrection,

that's, in my opinion, what we find.

Do we have any questions or comments today?

What are the ceiling stones? So it is the stone that gets rolled in front of

the tomb. The disc? Yes, the disc. Okay. Yes.

I didn't look at, but last week when we looked at But where the tomb of Jesus

was, it was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

So a sepulchre is a small room or monument cut in rock or built of stone in

which a dead person is later buried.

It's the stone that gets rolled in front of that area. It's a tomb.

Yes. Yeah, the tomb. Knowing how strong the Romans felt about their soldiers obeying orders,

I wonder what the Pharisees could have done or said to excuse their behavior.

It really makes me want to know what happened to the guards today.

You know, if they were given the money and the Pharisees said,

oh, we'll take care of it for you.

And the governor said, yeah, we'll take, they'll take care of it for you. Put it to death.

You know, I just, I don't know what they could have had over the governor to

convince him not to do that.

What excuse they could have come up with. What I know is, and I don't know a

direct answer to that, but Caiaphas was the longest lasting high priest of the first century.

And he was very political savvy.

Because at that point in time, and the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls

and kept those locked away for us,

those people called the high priest during the first century,

the wicked priest, because they were selected by Rome.

And so he knew how to handle things that were going on politically.

I don't remember exactly when he ended his reign as the high priest,

but it was a 15 or so year term that he served there.

And some of the people only lasted two or three years.

So most of the people, I would say, lasted only a couple of years.

And so Pilate and him did have a relationship, a very political relationship.

I was watching the third season of The Chosen.

And Pilate is quoted as saying, I don't trust that Caiaphas,

he's too political or something like that.

That comes right from history and what we know about Caiaphas.

But yeah, it would be very interesting to hear what happened.

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion on Jerusalem being the place

where the story of the resurrection of Jesus was first told.

This is just one more layer of discovery 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 known as the criterion

of embarrassment, which means that if something included in the story is embarrassing,

historians believe it is more likely to be true because most people don't want

to share embarrassing stories.

An embarrassing aspect of Jesus' resurrection, at least in the first century,

was that the first eyewitnesses were women.

Join us next time as we look at how this builds the case for Jesus' resurrection

being a historical event. Have a great day.