If you are interested in a detailed study of the reasons “Jesus was raised from the dead” can be taken seriously as an ancient historical claim, The Resurrection of Jesus by N. T. Wright is a great resource – all 800+ pages.  Here I just want to summarize a few of the points Wright and others have treated far more exhaustively. A few of my own nuances are included in this survey, but mostly they reflect work done far more extensively by many others.

(1)   If God did not raise Jesus from the dead, someone needs to offer a thesis that is at least as coherent and consistent explaining where the power came from that allowed a group of relatively small and disempowered Jewish believers to cross every imaginable boundary in creating new communities.  The early Jesus Movement crossed social, religious, class, economic, educational, political, familial, ethnic, and gender boundaries in a manner that was fully unique in the ancient world.  (I think the cult of Isis out of Egypt probably ranked second in this regard, but wasn’t really close.)  Some groups crossed a few of these boundaries, no other community came close to crossing all of these boundaries in the manner that almost all historians agree was accomplished by the early followers of Jesus.  If the energy and empowerment for this did not come from an experience of meeting Jesus of Nazareth whom God had raised from the dead as they claimed, where did it come from? (more…)