New look at Resurrection

The Resurrection has been debated by scholars from all parts of Christianity and from without.  Is there historical basis for this? Turns out, the politics gives it away.  From the days just after the Resurrection, we learn of opposition to Christians from the religious authorities of the temple, the Sadducees.  That’s suspicious.  Sadducees hated the Romans vehemently. Usually any dissident Jew or Rabbi, killed by the Romans, was given lip service or benefit after the fact. Rome was the greater enemy. So what if a few Galileans had a cult? 

            Charles Colson, writing about his Watergate co-conspirators says that Watergate proves the Resurrection.  The Watergate 12 knew they were trying to collaborate a lie with criminal consequences.  But John Dean, just two days later spilled the beans on the whole conspiracy.  Within two weeks it had completely fallen apart.  But the Resurrection witnesses were far more in number and held to their story of a risen Christ all the way to their graves, many dying of torture and crucifixion.  That’s abnormal for people trying to slip a lie, Colson noted. People try to save their skin.

            Back to Sadducees.  The Sadducees, wealthy Temple priests, were materialistic and had adopted Hellenistic luxuries. They didn’t believe in life after death, nor angels or spirits. The great issue, publicly and boldly made by the early Spirit-filled church, was that Jesus had risen from the dead and exalted to the sovereignty of the universe. He was demonstrating these great truths by unmistakable signs and wonders of his followers. Josephus, a Romanized outsider Jew, wrote about the politics of the era, and said that the Sadducees tried from the time of Jesus’s death to put down his followers.  Among Resurrection witnesses were Mary Magdalene, some women, Peter and John, two close followers from Emmaus, 500 people on a mountain in Galilee and 11 surviving apostles.  They all told the story that it wasn’t a ghost or a revived person thought dead.  It was Jesus arisen from the dead.  So persuasive were they that 50 days after the crucifixion, 5000 people joined this contingent post-Pentecost.

             The Sadducees had to do something about this gospel, so publicly and convincingly made, or they’d lose both political and ecclesiastical power.  Moreover, the demonstration of the resurrection of Jesus established his Messiahship, and convicted the rulers of sacrilege and murder in putting him to death, so that they were on a sort of public trial for their lives, their faith, their offices, and their political leadership. Yet we also know from obvious fact, they didn't kill off the threat.  Why? Acts tells us how they hauled the disciples in for trial. Stuff like this had to happen. Peter, an uneducated Galilean fisherman, turned the tables on them and prosecuted them (Acts 5).

            How do we know this trial’s verdict?  The Sadducees absolutely had to wipe out this new sect.  But in the New Testament, a Pharisee, Gamaliel, advised the 71-member Sanhedrin not to use capital punishment. Pharisees, more learned of the Torah, dominated the Sanhedrin. Gamaliel, the most honored sage of his time, grandson of Hillel, considered the greatest Jewish Rabbi, notoriously favored tolerance and mercy.  That the leaders of the Christian sect weren’t executed early-on closely validates the Acts account of Gamaliel’s singular leadership.  And so by political inference, historians believe that from the very start, Christians claimed Jesus had risen from the dead.  It couldn’t have been a later myth—the politics wouldn’t have happened this way. (Sadducees would have slyly praised Jesus at first.  Christians would have caved to pressure and likely absorbed. The disciples would not have been scattered.) The disciples were amazingly set free.  Along with Paul, they left footprints of mission work and their names in countries from Spain to India to Georgia to Ethiopia. All those countries have royal records of their first century visits.