“My Beloved King”- featuring Lucy Stimpson-Maynard with Maggie Horton on flute- from the album “Uplifted” recorded and produced by Bob Ross

An argument from sceptics who do not believe that Jesus was raised to life is that evidence from outside the Bible is limited so we only have the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of St Paul as evidence that Christ’s Resurrection is true.

I argued in last week’s blog that although the Romans and the Jews both had much to gain from disproving Christ’s Resurrection there is no evidence outside the Bible to disprove what the Bible says is true.

However, there are still the questions of who wrote the four Gospels and can we believe them?

The traditional view is that it was Matthew, the disciple and ex- tax collector who wrote the Gospel that bears his name.  Mark is believed to largely consist of the preaching of the disciple Peter arranged and shaped by his close associate John Mark who features in the Book of Acts as a companion of Paul and Barnabas. His mother had a house in Jerusalem which served as a place of communion for the disciples (Acts 12:12) Many think he was the young man who fled naked when Jesus was arrested (Mark 14:51) Traditionally John’s Gospel has been attributed to the disciple John, brother of James and son of Zebedee who may have been a cousin of Jesus (see blog May 7th) Luke, the author of the third Gospel was a Doctor and Historian who had, in his own words, carefully investigated the life of Christ.

Of course many refute this traditional view and, for example I recently read a claim that the Gospel of Mark was written by an unknown Christian in Syria. However even if the Gospels writers were Disciples of Christ can we still believe what they wrote? Some claim that we cannot because the Gospels were written thirty to fifty years after the Resurrection.  Well I personally don’t buy that one because I regularly meet the friends with whom I was at Teachers Training College more than 30 years ago and we reminisce on those college days as if they were yesterday. And if anyone wishes to know what happened on, for example D Day one sure way would be to speak with a World War 11 veteran who was actually there as an eye- witness.  However were the Gospel writers’ eye- witnesses? Well John appears to be – when describing Jesus on the cross being pierced in His side by a soldier John writes “The man who saw it has given testimony and his testimony is true he knows that he tells the truth and he testifies so that you may believe.” (John 19:35)

Eye – witnesses or not there is still the issue of whether or not that which the Gospel writers recorded can be believed. Classic aarguments disputing the Resurrection include  1) the disciples hallucinated 2) that Jesus did not really die on the cross but recovered in the tomb 2)   that the disciples stole the body.  The classic responses to 1) are that one person can hallucinate and “see things” but a whole group of people cannot hallucinate and all see the same thing.  To 2) the sudden flow of blood and water which occurred when Jesus was pieced by the soldier’s spear (John 19:34) would have come from Jesus’ pericardium and heart and was, therefore a sure sign that He was dead.  To 3) quite simply what would the disciples have gained from stealing the body of Jesus?

So what can be concluded – was Jesus really raised from the dead or not?  In next week’s blog  I will offer  my humble opinion.