Myth or Miracle?

It’s a bit hard to swallow isn’t it? I mean come on!  Admittedly there  is a lot of independent evidence that Jesus did indeed exist around the early part of what we now call the first century AD, that he was an inspirational speaker who shook up the Jewish establishment and who was executed by crucifixion. All of that is recorded by Roman historians among others and virtually all modern historians accept that the evidence is overwhelming and in fact more compelling that it is for the existence of historical figures such as Julius Caesar, whose existence no one seriously doubts.

OK so Jesus existed and made enough of a mark to have a footnote in history but  that same ‘history’ confirms that he was crucified. Throughout the period of the Roman Empire where crucifixion was a common form of execution and estimates suggest that up to 1 million people were crucified. There is no record of any survivors! So why should we believe that Jesus was the only exception?

We shouldn’t!  There is no doubt whatsoever that Jesus along with all the other people who were crucified  did in fact die. The Romans were experts, but to be absolutely sure, a spear was  driven into his heart before he was taken down from the cross.  So what’s all this stuff about him ‘rising from the dead?’ about you might ask. Once again it is well documented that the body of Jesus was put into a tomb dug into a rock face and that the tomb was sealed and guarded. Now remember that Jesus’ disciples had run off at the first sign of trouble before he was arrested and one would expect them to be terrified of being rounded up and executed in the same way. In fact they were (terrified) they all went into hiding. It was only a few women who dared to sneak over to the tomb while it was still dark to see if they could finagle  their way into giving him the ‘last rites’ due to a corpse in the Jewish tradition of the day.  They found the tomb empty and spread the word. A few weeks later these same disciples who had run away and hid were standing on street corners and telling crowds of people that Jesus had risen from the dead as proof positive that he was the Messiah that they had been waiting for, for 1,000 years.  Something miraculous had happened to turn cowards into heroes. And why didn’t the authorities simply produce the body to refute what they were saying? Clearly they couldn’t—it wasn’t there!! Are we really to believe that a handful of cowardly despondent men in fear of their own lives  had managed to overpower a guard, move a boulder sealing the tomb, remove the body, hide it so well that it has never been found and then  put their own lives at great risk by  confronting those same people who had shouted for Jesus to be crucified with a made up story of his resurrection?  And this was far from being a flash in the pan. These same people plus the growing number of followers whom they convinced of the truth of the resurrection  of Jesus,  took this message, the Gospel, throughout the known world.  Could all of this really be based on a lie?  However difficult it might be to believe in the resurrection of Jesus isn’t it harder to believe that a collection of mainly uneducated fishermen could make up a story and then sell it to the world?

I don’t think so do you??