in three 2 1 the resurrection of Jesus took everybody by surprise the disciples weren't expecting they knew perfectly well if you followed somebody who you thought was the Messiah and he got killed then that was it we know of at least a dozen other Messianic or prophetic movements within the hundred years either side of Jesus they routinely ended with the death of the founder um and if they if the movement wanted to continue they didn't say oh he's been raised from the dead they said let's find his brother or cousin or somebody who can carry
on this Movement we can see how those Jewish groups did that this one did it differently they had James the brother of Jesus as this great leader in the early church nobody said James was the Messiah they said Jesus was the why he's dead he they they got him didn't you realize they crucified no he was raised from the dead the only way you can explain why Christianity began and why it took the very precise shape it was is let's say it cautiously first they really did believe he was bodily raised from the dead and
then if you take the second question and say why would they believe that you can go through all the theories that they found themselves forgiven that they had a fresh sense of the presence of God that this was cognitive dissonance Etc and you bring all those theories to the actual facts that we know on the ground from the first century they just don't fit the only way you can explain the rise of the early Christian belief that Jesus was raised is that there really was an empty tomb they really did meet Jes Jesus alive again
in a transformed body and the thing makes sense of course when I wrote a big book on this My Philosophy tutor from Oxford who was an atheist um uh read it and he said great book you really make the argument he said I simply choose to believe that there must be some other explanation even though I don't know what it was I said fine that's as far as I can take you I can't bully you into saying therefore you must believe because to do that requires a change of world view but once you change the
world view and say maybe there really is a Creator God and maybe this Creator God really is sorting out this sad Old World At Last then everything else makes sense in a way that it doesn't with any other possibility [Music]
