Christian studies

1.According to multiple passages in the bible, most had similar stories of Jesus’ resurrection with
differences being the emphasis on different parts of Jesus’ resurrection. Most of the passages agree
that Jesus called god’s forgiveness or “why he has forsaken me?” and when people heard and saw
Jesus’ calling, they started to believe that Jesus truly was the Son of God. When Jesus died, the
temple was torn in two and the ground shook violently, showing Jesus’ death was significant in that
it provides evidence that proves Jesus’ identity as important and possibly “Elijah” or the “son of
God”.

There were many different interpretations of the death of Jesus. According to John, Mark and
Matthew, Jesus was offered a sponge soaked with wine vinegar attached to a staff drink. In some
interpretations, a centurion is included, and other men exclaim only after Jesus’ death that “Surely
he was the son of God.” This late exclamation by the people is present in Matthew and Marks
interpretation. Another noticeable difference in interpretations is the awaiting after giving Jesus the
drink of wine. Both in Matthew and Mark’s interpretation, the people around Jesus observed and
waited for “Elijah” as in Matthew 27:49 states, “Now leave him alone. Now let’s see if Elijah saves
him.” The most evident add on to the references of Jesus’ crucifixion is by John who states that
“One of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ body with a spear…” The emphasis that Jesus’ legs were not
broken because he was already dead emphasises that “Not one of his bones will be broken.” Which
is a sign that Jesus truly was the Son of God.

After Jesus’ death, most of the interpretations state that Jesus was secured in a tomb with a guard
for 3 days on the first day of the week, Jesus disappears, and an angel sent by God appeared in the
morning and either said to the women or just Mary Magdalene and the other Mary that “He is going
ahead of you into Galilee.” After this occurrence, the women rushed off to tell the disciples the good
news.

According to john 20:26, Thomas who did not believe Jesus really resurrected stated even after the
other disciples had told him, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the
nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” After this, Jesus showed Thomas his
hands and side to Thomas to prove that it was real and told Thomas to, “Stop doubting and believe.”

2. In “The Historicity of the Jesus’ Resurrection by Raymond, he proposes the main strands of
evidence that Jesus may have perhaps did not resurrect after the third day of his death. These two
main strands of evidence include; The empty tomb and Jesus’ Post crucifixion appearances. Both
‘evidences’ are very unlikely, and events must have been extremely coincidental to occur.

‘The empty tomb’ is divided into two theories that suggest that Jesus perhaps did not resurrect. The
first of these theories is “The stolen Body Theory”. This theory suggests that Jesus’ disciples removed
Jesus’ body. This theory is said by Raymond to be very unlikely as many aspects would have occurred
at the same time in order for the disciples to successfully remove Jesus’ body. First, the disciples
would need to pass the guards, if successful would have to lie about Jesus’ resurrection. For this to
have happened, the guards would have needed to be asleep and on top of this, lying was rarely
heard of from martyrs. Another tole body theory is that tomb robbers plundered the tomb.
However, this is incredible as no evidence was found of grave robbers and that they would have
needed to leave the wrappings of Jesus’ body intact.

Another theory is ‘The Swoon Theory’ is even less credible than the first. This theory suggested Jesus
did not actually die on the cross and that he “only slipped into a coma-like state” according to
Raymond. This evidence is virtually impossible as first, it suggests that the executioners left Jesus
alive and that Jesus was able to survive wounds to his hands and feet, trauma and the large amount
of blood loss.

The second strand of evidence supports the idea that Jesus resurrected not only due to the fact that
his body was missing from the tomb, but also the multiple appearances after his crucifixion. These
multiple appearances include, in chronological order, meeting Mary Magdalene and another
woman, Cleopas and another unnamed disciple, peter and 10 disciples. Adding to this evidence,
Jesus also allowed the disciples to touch him. With these multiple appearances, the likelihood of
many of these people hallucinating and telling a lie is highly unlikely.

Ultimately, after reading these evidences, it can be said with little doubt that Jesus did rise from the
dead as he said, on the third day after his death. Though there are theories to disprove this, these
theories are highly incredible and not sufficient in disproving the resurrection of Jesus.

3.From reasons above that Jesus really did resurrect, this shows that not only does this shows that
the gospel is true, but also that we are capable of being forgiven by god for our sins. This is
important as knowing that god exists and this fact removes doubt and allows myself to completely in
the religion; Christianity.