They are as follows:
1. After His crucifixion, Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb.
2. On the Sunday after the crucifixion, Jesus' tomb was found empty by a group of His women followers.
3. On multiple occasions, and under various circumstances, different individuals and groups saw Jesus alive after His death.
4. The original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe Jesus was risen from the dead, despite having every predisposition to the contrary.
For the next four weeks, we are going to look at the facts and some of the evidence that Craig uses to support the historicity of each.
Fact 1: After His crucifixion, Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb. This fact is highly significant because it means that the location of Jesus' tomb was known in Jerusalem to Jews and Christians alike. New Testament scholars have established the fact of Jesus' entombment on the basis of evidence such as the following:
1. Jesus' burial is attested in the information (from before A.D. 36) that was handed on by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5.
2. The burial story is independently attested in the source material that was used by Mark in writing his Gospel.
3. Given the understandable hostility in the early Christian movement toward the Jewish national leaders, Joesph of Arimathea, as a member of the Jewish high court that condemned Jesus, is unlikely to have been a Christian invention.
4. The burial story is simple and lacks any signs of being developed into a legend.
5. No other competing burial story exists.
Courage and Godspeed,
Chad
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