Empty tomb fits the facts

Professor NT Wright explains Christ’s resurrection makes sense of the facts.

The resurrection of Jesus took everybody by surprise... even his own disciples really weren’t expecting it.

They knew perfectly well that if you followed someone you thought was the Messiah, and he got killed, then that was it.

We know of at least a dozen other messianic or prophetic movements, within a hundred years on either side of Jesus, and they routinely ended with the death of the founder.

And if the movement wanted to continue, they didn’t say, “Oh he’s been raised from the dead.” They said, “Let’s find his brother or cousin or somebody who can carry on this movement.”

You can see how those Jewish groups did that. But the early Christians did it differently. They had James the brother of Jesus, as this great leader in the early church, but nobody said, “James is the Messiah.” They said, “Jesus is the Messiah.”

“Why? But he’s dead! They got him! Didn’t you realise, they crucified him?”

“No,” they said. “He was raised from the dead.”

That’s the only way you can explain how Christianity began, and why it took the very precise shape it did. The disciples really did believe Jesus was raised bodily from the dead.

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