(Updated May 14, 2026)
In the first century C.E. (Common Era) some people in the lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea were publicly proclaiming that a man named Jesus had died and was raised from the dead. These claims helped spread a growing movement which heralded Jesus not only as the Christ (the Greek term for the Jewish Messiah, or “anointed one”), but as the first of those to be resurrected in what is now called the “end times,” and ultimately as equal to God.
The idea of a general resurrection of all people, or a select group of them, at the end of this age had spread among the Jewish people in the centuries preceding the Christian movement. In his study of the development of this idea, Jewish author Jon Levenson (2006) found it to be an outgrowth of traditional Jewish beliefs such as the goodness of God’s creation, God’s intention to do justice to humanity, and God’s saving power over life and death. But as Christian Biblical scholar N.T. Wright (2003) points out, before the Christian movement there was no expectation that a single person would be resurrected before everyone else, nor that the Messiah would be such a person.
Trying to discern what actually happened to generate the claims about Jesus is one of the great puzzles of history. Even so, I think it is an apt place to begin in sorting out what can be discerned about Jesus’s life and teachings. We might question everything that’s been written about Jesus, but we know with certainty that his early followers talked about his resurrection from the dead. And because that belief had an influence on almost everything else they said about him, it needs to be taken into account in assessing our sources when they recount his life and teachings.
The earliest Christian sources that we have present three types of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. First, the Christian missionary Paul wrote letters with passages pertinent to the resurrection, including recounting a tradition that Jesus appeared to many people after his death. Second, four “gospels” recounting events of Jesus’ life and death say that a few of his women followers discovered that his tomb was empty two days after his body had been laid there. And third, three of those gospels and one other early Christian writing, the Acts of the Apostles, describe several of the appearances of the resurrected Jesus.
On the following pages I will examine this evidence from a historical perspective and defend a set of hypotheses. Below are links to the pages with the hypotheses discussed on each of them listed below the links:
3a. Paul’s list of the appearances of Jesus.
H1. There was a first-century Christian tradition carefully handed down that affirmed Jesus died, was buried, and on the third day after his death was raised from the dead.
H2. There were multiple reports of appearances of the risen Jesus circulating among the early Christians, the most important of which was an initial appearance to Cephas, also know as Peter or Simon.
3b. Paul’s comments about resurrected bodies.
H3. Paul, who claimed to be a witness of an appearance of the risen Jesus, believed resurrected bodies are substantially different (composed of a “spiritual” substance) than our bodies as they exist before death.
3c. Paul’s spiritual experiences.
H4. Paul had multiple unusual experiences he regarded as of divine origin, indicating that he engaged in practices that made him receptive to such events.
3d. The gospels as historical sources
H5. The four gospels have serious limitations as sources for historical events and inferences from them should be made with caution.
3e. The burial of Jesus’ body.
H6. Some women followers of Jesus saw his dead body being removed from the cross after his crucifixion, from which they inferred that the body would be buried by the Jewish authorities.
H7. The gospel authors’ did not know the details of the interment of Jesus’ body; the depiction of Joseph burying it in a tomb by itself is fictional.
3f. The empty tomb. (Coming soon)
Jesus Reconstructed 