Did Jesus rise from the dead?

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

The apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:14 (ESV)

Start with what historians agree on

You don’t have to begin by trusting the Bible. Gary Habermas, who has spent decades surveying the scholarship, starts with facts that “scholars of almost every religious and philosophical persuasion recognize as being historical.”¹ He calls them minimal facts. His three main ones are:¹

1. Jesus died due to the process of crucifixion.
2. Very soon afterwards, Jesus’s disciples had experiences that they believed were appearances of the resurrected Jesus.
3. Just a few years later, Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor who became the apostle Paul, also experienced what he thought was an appearance of the risen Jesus.

Here’s the evidence for each, and for two more facts that most scholars accept.

The evidence

Jesus died on a Roman cross

The Roman historian Tacitus reports that Christus “suffered the extreme penalty” under Pontius Pilate.² Bart Ehrman, an agnostic scholar, lists it among the “few things we can say with virtual certainty about Jesus”: He “was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.”³

In 1986, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study of the Gospel accounts that concluded: “Modern medical interpretation of the historical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead when taken down from the cross.”⁴ Later physicians have argued over the exact cause of death, which is hard to know because crucifixion is no longer practiced.⁵ None of that changes the fact of death.

His followers believed they saw Him alive

The earliest written evidence is a summary Paul passed on to the church in Corinth:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

1 Corinthians 15:3-8 (ESV)⁶

Paul wrote this letter in the mid-50s AD.⁷ But he says he “received” this summary from others, and scholars think it was a fixed statement before Paul wrote it down. Habermas reports that “the vast majority of critical scholars who answer the question place Paul’s reception of this material in the mid-30s A.D.” and that “even more skeptical scholars generally agree.”⁸ That’s within a few years of the crucifixion.

Skeptics accept the experiences themselves. Ehrman writes: “I think some (a few) of the disciples had visions of Jesus. That is, they saw him, or thought they saw him.”⁹

Paul the persecutor saw Him too

Paul had tried to destroy the church before he joined it (Galatians 1:13). He says the risen Jesus “appeared also to me,” and that 3 years later he spent 15 days in Jerusalem with Peter and met “James the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:18-19).⁶¹⁰ Ehrman accepts that “Paul knew Jesus’ brother, James, and he knew his closest disciple, Peter, and he tells us that he did.”¹¹

James, Jesus’s brother, became a leader

James appears in Paul’s list of appearances. The Jewish historian Josephus records that James, “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ,” was handed over to be stoned in Jerusalem.¹² Habermas is candid that he goes “back and forth” on counting James among the minimal facts.¹

The tomb was found empty

This one isn’t a minimal fact. Habermas has “never counted the empty tomb as a Minimal Fact,” and estimates that about 75% of the scholars he surveyed favor arguments for it.¹⁸ The case rests on three points:

• The earliest opponents assumed it. The first counter-claim was that the disciples stole the body. Matthew reports the story being told: “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep” (Matthew 28:13).¹³ A century later, Justin Martyr records a Jewish teacher saying the same thing: “his disciples stole him by night from the tomb.”¹⁴ As William Lane Craig puts it, “the Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb.”¹⁵
• The resurrection was preached in Jerusalem. Craig argues it “would have been impossible for the disciples to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem had the tomb not been empty.”¹⁵
• Women found it. Josephus records a rule of his day: “let not the testimony of women be admitted.”¹⁶ A made-up story would hardly lead with women witnesses. Scholars weigh this argument differently. Ehrman once made it himself and now doubts it.¹⁷

The theories offered against the resurrection

They saw visions or hallucinations

Gerd Lüdemann, a German New Testament scholar, argued that “the origin of the Easter faith must be sought in the visionary experiences” of Peter and Paul.¹⁸ Ehrman notes that grieving people often report seeing a loved one who has died.⁹

Visions don’t explain an empty tomb. They also don’t explain why Paul, who wanted the movement gone, and James, who didn’t believe in his brother during Jesus’s lifetime (John 7:5), both came to believe. And N. T. Wright points out how unusual the claim was: “In no other case, however, right across the century before Jesus and the century after him, do we hear of any Jewish group saying that their executed leader had been raised again from the dead.”¹⁹

He didn’t really die

This “swoon” theory was answered in the 19th century by a skeptic. David Friedrich Strauss, who didn’t believe in the resurrection, wrote that a man who “had stolen half-dead out of the sepulchre, who crept about weak and ill,” could not have given the disciples “the impression that he was a Conqueror over death and the grave.”²⁰

The disciples stole the body

This is the oldest alternative, and it admits the tomb was empty.¹³¹⁴ It also requires the disciples to have preached what they knew was a lie. Encyclopaedia Britannica‘s article on Jesus, written by the historian E. P. Sanders, says “it is difficult to accuse these sources, or the first believers, of deliberate fraud,” and notes that some of the witnesses “would give their lives for their belief. This also makes fraud unlikely.”²¹

The women went to the wrong tomb

Kirsopp Lake suggested in 1907 that the women “came in the early morning to a tomb which they thought was the one in which they had seen the Lord buried,” though he offered it as no more than a suggestion.²² If they had, the authorities could have pointed to the right tomb, and the Jerusalem preaching would have ended there.¹⁵

It’s a legend that grew over time

Legends need time. The summary in 1 Corinthians 15 goes back to within a few years of the crucifixion, while people who knew Jesus were still alive and could be asked.⁸ Ehrman doubts that Jesus received a proper burial at all.²³ But Josephus says Jews “took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun.”²⁴

The strongest objection

History can tell us what people believed. It can’t tell us that a miracle happened. Even if the disciples sincerely believed they saw Jesus, that agreement says nothing about what caused their belief. The sources also differ in their details. Britannica says “it is hard to say what really happened” and that the accounts disagree about who saw Jesus and where.²¹

Response

That’s fair, as far as it goes. Historians agree on the facts, not on the explanation. But the facts still need one. A crucified man’s followers, His skeptical brother, and a persecutor all came to believe they had seen Him alive. They preached it in the city where He was buried, and His opponents’ answer assumed the tomb was empty.

Every natural explanation covers part of that and fails on the rest. Visions don’t move a body. A stolen body doesn’t explain Paul. A man who survived a Roman crucifixion doesn’t convince anyone He has conquered death. The resurrection explains all of it. I believe it’s what happened. Whether you’re ready to say that, the facts are worth facing on their own terms.

What this doesn’t show

It isn’t a proof. History deals in probabilities. The case above shows what’s most reasonable to believe, not what’s impossible to doubt.

The scholarly counts are estimates. Habermas’s figures come from his own survey, and he asks himself whether they are “something between a rough guess and an estimate.”¹ Some Christian scholars, like the philosopher Timothy McGrew, worry about resting the case on scholarly consensus at all, rather than on the evidence itself.²⁵

Some details are disputed. Ehrman, for example, finds an appearance to more than 500 people at once “highly implausible.”²⁶

Questions people ask

How early is the creed in 1 Corinthians 15?

Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in the mid-50s AD, but he passes on a summary he had already received.⁷ Most critical scholars date his receiving it to the mid-30s, within a few years of the crucifixion.⁸

Could the disciples have hallucinated?

Visions are the most common skeptical explanation.¹⁸ But they don’t account for the empty tomb, or for Paul and James, who weren’t followers and had no reason to see what they wanted to see.

Did Jesus really die on the cross, or did He faint?

The evidence says He died. The 1986 JAMA study concluded He “was dead when taken down from the cross,” and even the skeptic Strauss rejected the fainting theory.⁴²⁰

Why does it matter that women found the empty tomb?

In that culture, women’s testimony counted for less. Josephus records a rule that “the testimony of women” was not to be admitted.¹⁶ Inventing women as the first witnesses would have weakened the story, which suggests the Gospel writers kept a detail they would rather not have had. Not every scholar finds this argument convincing.¹⁷

Go deeper

• Did Jesus really exist?: what Roman and Jewish writers said about Him.
• The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona: the minimal facts case in full. On the Shelf under “Going deeper.”
• The Resurrection of the Son of God by N. T. Wright: the scholarly standard, for readers who want depth.

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By Casey Case · Sources last checked October 11, 2026

Sources

1. Gary R. Habermas, “The Minimal Facts Approach to the Resurrection of Jesus: The Role of Methodology as a Crucial Component in Establishing Historicity,” Southeastern Theological Review 3, no. 1 (2012): 15-26. ↩︎
2. Tacitus, Annals 15.44, trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, Perseus Digital Library. ↩︎
3. Bart D. Ehrman, “Jesus’ Crucifixion as King of the Jews,” The Bart Ehrman Blog, November 21, 2016. ↩︎
4. W. D. Edwards, W. J. Gabel, and F. E. Hosmer, “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” JAMA 255, no. 11 (1986): 1455-1463. ↩︎
5. Maslen and Mitchell, “Medical Theories on the Cause of Death in Crucifixion,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 99, no. 4 (2006): 185-188. ↩︎
6. 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, ESV. ↩︎
7. Bart D. Ehrman, “1 Corinthians: Who, When, and Why,” The Bart Ehrman Blog, April 6, 2025. ↩︎
8. Gary R. Habermas, “Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What Are Critical Scholars Saying?,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3, no. 2 (2005): 135-153. ↩︎
9. Bart D. Ehrman, “Did the Disciples See Jesus Raised from the Dead?,” The Bart Ehrman Blog, April 4, 2021, with his replies to readers. ↩︎
10. Galatians 1:18-19, ESV. ↩︎
11. “Did Jesus Exist? A Historian Makes His Case,” interview with Bart Ehrman, NPR, April 1, 2012. ↩︎
12. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 20.200, trans. William Whiston, Perseus Digital Library. ↩︎
13. Matthew 28:11-15, ESV. ↩︎
14. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 108, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, Christian Classics Ethereal Library. ↩︎
15. William Lane Craig, “The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus,” New Testament Studies 31 (1985): 39-67. ↩︎
16. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 4.219, trans. William Whiston, Perseus Digital Library. ↩︎
17. Bart D. Ehrman, “The Women and the Empty Tomb,” The Bart Ehrman Blog, October 8, 2012. ↩︎
18. Gerd Lüdemann, description of The Resurrection of Christ, on his website, accessed Oct. 11, 2026. ↩︎
19. N. T. Wright, “Christian Origins and the Resurrection of Jesus: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Problem,” Sewanee Theological Review 41, no. 2 (1998). ↩︎
20. David Friedrich Strauss, A New Life of Jesus, vol. 1 (1879), 412, Internet Archive. ↩︎
21. E. P. Sanders, “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150709031548/Jesus”>http://www.britannica.com/biography/Jesus-Christ/The-Resurrection”>Jesus Christ: The Resurrection,” Encyclopaedia Britannica (archived July 9, 2015). ↩︎
22. Kirsopp Lake, The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1907), 251-252, Internet Archive. ↩︎
23. Bart D. Ehrman, “post on Jesus’s burial,” The Bart Ehrman Blog, July 2, 2014, excerpting How Jesus Became God. ↩︎
24. Josephus, The Jewish War 4.317, trans. William Whiston, Project Gutenberg. ↩︎
25. Timothy McGrew, response in the Southeastern Theological Review 3, no. 1 (2012). ↩︎
26. Bart D. Ehrman, “Did Jesus Appear to 500 People After His Resurrection?,” The Bart Ehrman Blog, December 20, 2022. ↩︎