Summary
History is crucial to Christianity. It keeps the Christian faith from degenerating into mythology. Christianity, more than any other religion, has at its core a historical event – the resurrection of Jesus. This is an event that, if found to be false, means Christianity on the whole must be disbelieved.But if the resurrection is true, it would serve the purpose of substantiating all of the claims of Jesus – that he was the Messiah after all, he was the Son of God after all. Therefore, all of his teachings will have been validated by this one historical (albeit supernatural) event. Every thing Jesus said or taught must then be considered true. But only if the resurrection is true!
Without regarding the Bible as the Word of God, but merely looking at the books of the New Testament as ancient documents (as any historian would do for any ancient document), it can be surprising to the uninitiated that the resurrection event can be shown to be historically accurate.
Class Notes
Suggested Reading
There are many books available that deal with the historicity of Jesus. Just a couple are mentioned here.Dr. Gary Habermas, one of the leading authorities on the historical evidences of the resurrection, has co-authored a book that was published in 2004 titled "The Case For The Resurrection of Jesus".
Dr. Habermas 1976 doctoral dissertation, "The Resurrection of Jesus: A Rational Inquiry", is available online.
Robert Van Voorst published a book in 2000 titled "Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence" that discusses the evidence found outside the New Testament in other ancient documents (including non-Christian documents such as Roman and Jewish writings). He analyzes them in order to find out what they tell us about Jesus of Nazareth.
Here are just a couple more authors that discuss the historicity of Jesus and the resurrection in their published works:
