Jesus Resurrection Research Paper

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One of the most perplexing events in the ministry of Jesus Christ is His resurrection from the dead. Many skeptics look at it as made up stories or hallucinations, or mass hysteria, yet the biblical accounts and other evidences point to another conclusion. This research paper will explore three pieces of evidence that the resurrection story is factual and can be accepted as a historical event. The first evidence for Jesus’ resurrection: the stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty. .John (20:1) reports that Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb “and saw the stone taken away from the tomb.” This was a large, round stone placed in a groove in front of the tomb to secure it from grave robbers. It would have taken several strong men to John goes into more detail concerning the grave clothes than the other gospels do. In telling the story, John uses three different Greek words meaning “to see.” When John first arrived at the tomb, he stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in (John 20:5). He uses the common Greek word that suggests nothing more than sight. But when Peter got there, he entered the tomb and saw the linen wrappings (John 20:6). Here the Greek word has the nuance of looking carefully or examining something. We get our word theater from it. Audiences at a theater watch carefully so as not to miss any part of the play. Finally, John went in, saw, and believed (John 20:8). Here John uses a word that means to see with understanding. Jewish burials involved wrapping the corpse with linen strips and tucking spices into the folds to offset the stench of the corpse. The head was wrapped separately. Peter and John saw the linen wrappings with the face cloth rolled up by itself in an orderly manner, but Jesus’ body was gone. Grave robbers would not have taken the time to remove the grave clothes at the scene, but would have grabbed the body with the grave clothes and left. Or, if they had removed them, they would have left them scattered in a disorderly fashion. D. A. Carson (The Gospel According to John [Eerdmans/Apollos], pp. 637-638) observes, “The description is powerful and vivid, not the sort of thing that would have been dreamed up; and the fact that two men saw it (v. 8) makes their evidence admissible in a Jewish court (Dt. 19:15).” When Jesus raised Lazarus, he was raised in his old body, which was still subject to disease and death. So Lazarus couldn’t pass through the grave clothes, but had to be unbound by bystanders (John 11:44). But Jesus was raised with a resurrection body that is no longer subject to death. That new body is physical yet could pass through the grave

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