Scripture
1 Corinthians 15:3-8
Paul summarizes the received apostolic proclamation of Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and appearances.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all He appeared to me also, as to one of untimely birth.
Received testimony
Paul frames the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Jesus as received testimony at the center of the apostolic message.
Where this passage comes up
- Jesus died on a stake, not a crossThe New Testament never settles the shape of the stauros, hints at a crossbeam, and puts all its weight on Jesus' death rather than on the wood.
- Jesus never existedHistorians across belief, including the agnostic scholar Bart Ehrman, agree that Jesus lived and was crucified under Pilate. The open question is who he was.
- Jesus was a MuslimJesus submitted wholly to God, but the earliest records show a Jewish teacher who spoke of himself and his death in ways the Qur'an later denies.
- Jesus was not crucifiedJesus' crucifixion is recorded within years by his followers and later by hostile Roman and Jewish writers; no historical record before the Qur'an says otherwise.
- Miracles are impossibleNatural laws describe what nature does when left to itself. They cannot rule out a God who acts, so the real question about miracles is the evidence.
- The Bible is corruptedThe manuscripts differ in small ways, but the Gospel Christians held in Muhammad's day, which the Qur'an tells them to judge by, survives and can be read today.
- The Bible lost plain and precious truthsThe manuscripts show small, documented copying changes, not an early removal of doctrine, and the Bible already teaches what the Book of Mormon calls plain and precious.
- The Qur'an is inimitableThe Qur'an's eloquence is real, but beauty is judged by taste and language, not truth. The Christian claim rests instead on a public event open to historical inquiry.
- Daniel 9 and the Messiah before the Temple's destructionDaniel 9 is difficult and its arithmetic is disputed, but its sequence is clear. An anointed one is cut off, and then the city and sanctuary are destroyed.
- The crucifixion of JesusPaul's early sources, the movement's beginnings in Jerusalem, hostile Roman and Jewish writers, and the embarrassment of a crucified Messiah all point to a real execution under Pilate.
- The reliability of the New TestamentPaul's letters preserve a summary of belief from within a few years of Jesus' death, the Gospels were written within living memory, and the text can be recovered with confidence.
- The resurrection witnessesThe earliest Christian claim was public testimony from named witnesses, and any explanation of it has to cover the whole set of facts historians accept.
- The bodily resurrection of JesusLuke, John, Paul, and Acts all tie the risen Jesus to the body that died. Paul's "spiritual body" describes a body made new, not a body left behind.
- The resurrection as messianic vindicationA crucified Messiah looked like a contradiction to Jesus' own followers. They read his resurrection as God overturning that verdict, and argued it from the Psalms and Isaiah.