For me, I think it makes a whole lotta sense to build my apologetic and theology on Jesus’ resurrection, because that’s what all the weight of Christianity falls upon. That’s where Christianity stakes its claim in history. And that’s where Christianity, in my view, is most defensible. From the resurrection, I reason outward.
Taking into consideration the humanity of the authors of the separate and individual accounts and testimonies that comprise the New Testament is, to me, extraordinarily compelling. The prophetic description that Jesus gives of the destruction of the Jewish Temple is often overlooked, but it’s still remarkable. It happened exactly as He said it would, some 40 years later. Read the historian Josephus, and compare his description of what happened to what Jesus predicted, decades earlier.
Jesus said that He came to fulfill God’s old covenant with Israel, and that it would be retired when everything in it was “accomplished.” On August 6, 70 A.D. it most certainly was retired when the Romans completely destroyed the Jewish Temple. The Mosaic Law was never officially practiced again. It became impossible to do so. The same Jewish Temple power structure that sought to stamp out the tiny sect of Jesus’ followers from their beginning, was itself stamped out ~ as Jesus’ ekklesia continued to grow.
The old testament prophets understood that something new and different was coming, and they foretold the coming of the Messiah. Then there’s the prediction of the resurrection, the eyewitness accounts of the events documented in the New Testament, and the inexplicable birth and growth of Jesus’ ekklesia. Even Bart Erhman, an atheist and world renowned biblical scholar, concedes that there’s no way to get to the 3.5 million Christians seen by the fourth century…despite their persecution by the mighty Roman Empire…if there had not been an explosive growth early in the life of the church. An explosive growth that was fueled by an extraordinary event in history ~ Jesus’ resurrection.
And not incidentally, by the fourth century, Christianity…stemming from the tiny sect of Jesus’ followers…had already replaced the pantheon of Roman, Barbarian, and most Egyptian gods, and was soon to be the state religion of the very Roman Empire itself that had tried to eradicate it from its beginning.
These remarkable historical events weren’t fueled by something that was written. These remarkable historical events were fueled by something extraordinary that happened.
