The claim under examination is old, specific and testable. Paul put it in writing within a few decades of the event, passing on a summary he says he had received: “how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Christians hold that Jesus of Nazareth, executed by Rome under Pontius Pilate, was dead and buried and then alive again in his body. They do not offer this as a symbol. Paul staked everything on it: “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17).
A claim like that can be investigated the way other historical claims are, and it can fail. The finding of this investigation is that it does not. A short list of facts about Jesus’ death and what his followers experienced afterward is granted by historians who believe and historians who do not. The two most popular natural explanations, grief hallucinations and a story borrowed from pagan myth, both break down when tested against those facts. The evidence stops short of one step, however. Whether a historian may conclude that God raised a dead man depends on a premise the documents cannot settle by themselves, and that premise needs to be stated openly.
The witnesses come from several Jude 3 Project conversations, and each does different work: