Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?

What the most common arguments miss—and what still might matter

Lack of Evidence for a Bodily Resurrection of Jesus

What the most common arguments miss—and what still might matter

Yesterday I published a post about my personal journey with resurrection.

I wrote about how I let go of belief in a literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus—and how, in doing so, I experienced a kind of resurrection myself.

But I left something out.

I didn’t go into the arguments for the bodily resurrection. The ones I was taught to use. The ones I used to preach. The ones I used to believe.

And while the emotional journey mattered more in my story, I know for a lot of people, it’s the evidence—or lack of it—that opens the door.

So here it is.

The three most common arguments I hear for why the bodily resurrection of Jesus must have happened—and why, when you actually look closely, none of them really hold up.

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1. “Why would they die for a lie?”

This argument depends on two things being true:
That the apostles knowingly invented a false story.
And that they were all later killed for refusing to recant it.

Neither of those claims is well-supported.

Let’s start with “the twelve.”
You’ve probably heard that all of Jesus’ closest followers—minus Judas—went to their deaths rather than deny they saw him risen.

But that’s not a historical claim.
It’s a later tradition. And like a lot of pop apologetics, it works better as a sermon illustration than an actual argument.

The dramatic martyrdom stories—Peter crucified upside down, Thomas speared in India, Bartholomew flayed alive—don’t come from the New Testament.
They come from legends, written decades or even centuries later. And they contradict each other constantly.

Could some of the apostles have been martyred? Sure.
Could their deaths have been embellished to make a theological point? Also yes.
There’s just no way to verify that they were killed for claiming to see a bodily resurrected Jesus.

At best, we’re guessing.
At worst, we’re repeating a story that was built to retroactively bolster a fragile claim.

So what potential eyewitnesses do we actually have historical reason to believe may have died for their belief in a bodily resurrection?

Only two names rise to the top.

Let’s take a closer look at them.

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Paul.
He was almost certainly martyred in Rome under Nero.
But he never met Jesus during his lifetime. And the resurrection experiences he describes are visions—not physical interactions.

In fact, Paul seems to go out of his way to say his experience was different from the others. He never mentions the empty tomb. Never describes a walking, talking Jesus.
So we can’t say Paul claimed to see Jesus in bodily form.
If anything, he makes it clear he didn’t.

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James, the brother of Jesus.
James became a key leader in the early Jerusalem church.
Later tradition, and sources like Josephus, suggest he was eventually martyred.

But nowhere in the New Testament does it say James saw the risen Jesus in bodily form.
Acts, which includes several resurrection appearances, never shows James having one.
That would be a strange omission if it were a known fact.

Paul is the only writer who mentions it—briefly—in 1 Corinthians 15:7:

“Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”

That’s it. No details, no story, no context.

And in the very next line, Paul adds:

“And last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”

As we’ll see later, Paul’s own experience was a vision, not a physical encounter.
So whatever James experienced—if anything—it’s only mentioned by Paul, and only in the same breath as his mystical vision.

In the Gospel of John, James is portrayed as someone who didn’t even believe in Jesus during his lifetime. That may or may not be historically reliable, especially considering historical accuracy isn’t exactly John’s forte, but it’s one of the few glimpses we get of James before the crucifixion.

So yes, something changed James.
Could it have been a resurrection appearance? Maybe.
But if it was, it’s odd that neither Luke nor Acts mentions it, especially considering how central James becomes in the church.

Some argue, “Well, clearly he saw Jesus, or he wouldn’t have converted.”
But that’s conjecture. We don’t know if the John account is accurate. And even if it is, it’s just as likely that the trauma of Jesus’ death or the momentum of the early movement sparked his belief.

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So, no.

There isn’t a single incident that a responsible historian would point to and say:

“This person claimed to see the risen Jesus in bodily form and was later martyred for it.”

We really only have one potential scenario where that could have happened:
James. And that’s based entirely on a single line from Paul—who, let’s remember, thought visions were real-world experiences.

That’s it.

This argument doesn’t just fall flat—it potentially undermines itself.

Because once you start looking at how many of these martyrdom stories were invented later, you start to wonder if some of them were created precisely to reinforce a bodily resurrection story that wasn’t as universally accepted in the beginning as we were told.

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2. “The tomb was empty.”

Paul never mentions an empty tomb.
Not once.

And remember—Paul’s letters are the earliest Christian writings we have, predating the Gospels by decades.

He says Jesus “was buried” and “was raised,” but never offers any detail about what happened to the body. No tomb. No women. No angels. No rolled-away stone. Just a mystical event that mattered deeply to him.

So where does the tomb story come from?

Let’s walk through it.

The Gospel of Mark, the earliest one, was likely written around the year 70 CE—about 40 years after Jesus' death. The version most scholars consider original ends in chapter 16, verse 8, with the women fleeing the tomb in fear and telling no one what they saw. No Jesus. No appearances. No triumphant return. Just silence and terror.

The verses that come after that?
They were added later—probably by scribes uncomfortable with such an abrupt, unresolved ending.

So imagine for a moment that you’re an early Christian in the late first century.
You have a copy of Mark’s Gospel—but not the added verses at the end.
What are you supposed to take from that ending?

That something happened.
That the tomb was probably empty.
That the people who first witnessed it were too afraid to speak.

That’s it.

Now fast forward 10–15 years.

Matthew and Luke are written, likely in the 80s CE, both using Mark as a source—but with their own flourishes. By this point, the resurrection story has grown.

In Matthew, there’s an earthquake, guards at the tomb, and Jesus appearing to the women who grab his feet.

In Luke, Jesus appears to two disciples on the road, then later eats broiled fish to prove he’s not a ghost.

Some conservative scholars argue that between Mark and these later Gospels, the authors simply found more eyewitnesses. That they “did more research” and filled in the gaps.

That’s possible.
But it’s also conjecture.

And we know how stories work.
Especially sacred stories.
They grow.

They evolve as communities reflect, remember, and retell.
What begins in Mark as a profound and unresolved mystery becomes something much more detailed—and much more physical—in Matthew and Luke.

And the two don't always agree:

• In Matthew, the women see Jesus immediately.

• In Luke, they don’t.

• In Matthew, Jesus appears in Galilee.

• In Luke, it’s all in and around Jerusalem.

• One has silence, one has joy. One has grabbing feet, the other has eating fish.

It’s not just contradiction.
It’s development.

Then comes John, written near the end of the first century—60 to 70 years after Jesus’ death.

By now, we’ve fully entered the realm of mythic storytelling.

Jesus walks through locked doors.
He breathes the Holy Spirit onto people.
He appears and disappears at will.
He lets Thomas touch his wounds.
He shares a beachside breakfast with his friends.

It’s beautiful. It’s sacred. It’s powerful.

But it’s not journalism.
It’s not a forensic timeline.
It’s the theological imagination of a community that had been wrestling with this mystery for decades.

So was the tomb literally empty?
Maybe.

But even that isn’t central to the earliest writings.
It only becomes central later—as the story grows.

And that might be the most honest answer of all.

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3. “He appeared to 500 people!”

This line comes from 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul lists those to whom Jesus appeared—including “more than 500 brothers and sisters at once.”

But slow down.

Paul doesn’t say where or when this happened.

No other New Testament writer mentions it—not even the Gospel authors, who, writing many years after Paul, should have known about it if it were common knowledge. Especially since Paul makes a point to say, “many of them are still alive.”

We have no record of what these 500 people saw.
We don’t know if they were gathered in one place or if that’s a rhetorical number.
We don’t know if they saw the same thing or if they even described it as a bodily appearance.

And again: in Paul’s world, visions and revelations were real.
They didn’t need to be physical to be true.

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The bottom line?

This is an interesting thing for Paul to say—no doubt about it.
But we have no idea if it really happened, or what he actually meant by it.

To assume Jesus appeared in bodily form is to read Paul through our lens, not his.

To Paul, Jesus after death wasn’t a guy showing up like your old buddy back from vacation.
He was more like a Star Wars Jedi ghost—real, meaningful, and present, but more like a personal vision than a physical encounter.

Even the Damascus Road story in Acts—written later—says that those traveling with Paul saw nothing. Only Paul experienced the vision. He calls it a “heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19).

In 1 Corinthians 15, he describes resurrection using strange language about “spiritual bodies” and “heavenly bodies”—saying:

“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”

“Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.”

“We will all be changed, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye.”

So not only does Paul never describe a physical Jesus—he seemingly rejects the idea that resurrection means reanimating a corpse.

To Paul, resurrection wasn’t about a dead man walking.
It was about an encounter with something spiritual, transformational, and real.

But physical?
No. That’s our modern assumption, not his ancient worldview.

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Final Thought

None of this means the bodily resurrection of Jesus didn’t happen.

It just means we should stop pretending it can be proven.

These stories aren’t failures.
They’re myths.

And myths don’t lose their power because they didn’t happen.
They lose their power when we mistake metaphor for history.

If you made it this far and haven’t read my post from yesterday, please do.
This one is a follow-up—and honestly, way less important to me overall.

Because I still firmly believe in the resurrection.
I explain why here.