The Earliest Testimony to the Claim

The earliest surviving written testimony to the resurrection is not a Gospel but a fragment embedded in one of Paul's letters. In the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, written around 53 to 54 CE, Paul quotes what most scholars agree is an even older creedal formula, a fixed list of resurrection appearances that he says he had himself received, which places its origin within a very few years of the crucifixion. The Gospels, written later, add the tradition of an empty tomb discovered by women followers. What can be established by ordinary historical method and what the claim itself asserts are treated separately by scholars.

Historians can examine the empty tomb tradition, the early date of the appearances list, and the transformation the early community underwent, but whether these are best explained by an actual bodily resurrection or by some other cause is a question historical method alone cannot settle, since it turns on whether a resurrection is the kind of event that can happen. The modern debate has notable defenders on each side: N.T. Wright argues at length that a bodily resurrection remains the best explanation of the combined evidence, while Bart Ehrman argues that visionary or grief-related experience among the early followers is the more parsimonious explanation. This entry states the positions and does not choose between them.