Evidence · Case 02 · Resurrection of Christ
The early date of the witness list
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
The summary Paul quotes is generally traced to within a few years of the crucifixion. Paul says he met Peter and James in Jerusalem about three years after his conversion, in Galatians 1:18, and skeptical scholars such as Gerd Lüdemann have dated the core of the tradition to that early period.
Sources
dating discussion at
Objections & responses
- Even a few years is enough time for grieving, expectant followers to convince themselves of something. Legends don’t need generations; they can form in weeks.
Fair, and it shifts the discussion from legend to group psychology, which is where it belongs. What the early date rules out is the older theory that the resurrection was a theological layer added generations later onto the memory of a simple prophet. Whether a group could persuade itself within weeks that a crucified leader was alive, and then persuade a hostile persecutor and a skeptical brother as well, is a different question, and it is the one the hallucination and grief-vision explanation is meant to answer.