Did Jesus really die, was his tomb really empty the next day, and is it true that people saw him afterwards? 

In this short book, excerpted from his investigative work in The Case for Christ, Mr. Strobel  addresses the following questions:

1.      Was Jesus really dead after his ordeal on the cross?

2.      Was his tomb actually empty on that first Easter morning?

3.      Did credible people subsequently encounter him? 

The Koran (which was written in the seventh century) proposes that Jesus didn't actually die on the cross, but was resuscitated and the Ahmadiya Muslim sect believe that He then fled to India.  Others in the nineteenth century speculate that Jesus didn't actually die but either fainted from exhaustion or was given a drug which made Him appear dead, but He later revived in the cool, damp air of the tomb. ( pages 10, 11) For answers to the first question,  "Did Jesus really die on the cross?" Mr. Strobel interviews former research scientist, Dr. Alexander Metherell, M.D. Ph.D.  

In describing what happened to Jesus, Dr. Metherell begins in the Garden of Gethsemane where we are told that in the agony of prayer Jesus began to sweat drops of blood.  Dr. M. describes this sweating of blood as a known medical condition call hematidrosis.  "It's not very common, but it is associated with a high degree of psychological stress." (page 14)  Dr. M. further comments, "…this set up the skin to be extremely fragile so that when Jesus was flogged by the Roman soldier the next day, His skin would be very, very sensitive." (page 15) 

In response to Mr. Strobel's question, "What was the flogging like?" Dr. M. responds, and I only quote part, "Roman floggings were known to be terribly brutal………..The soldier would use a whip of braided leather thongs with metal balls (and pieces of sharp bone) woven into them.  When the whip would strike the flesh, these balls would cause deep bruises or contusions, which would break open with further blows……. The back would be so shredded that part of the spine was sometimes exposed by the deep, deep cuts.  …..The whipping would have gone all the way from the shoulders down to the back, the buttocks, and the back of the legs….As the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh.' …If a victim did not die from this beating he would experience tremendous pain and go into hypovolemic shock.'" (pages 15,16)  Dr. M.  states that Jesus was in hypovolemic shock as "he staggered up the road to the execution site at Calvary, carrying the horizontal beam of the cross……Finally Jesus collapsed and the Roman soldier ordered Simon to carry the cross for Him." (pages 16,17)  Dr. M. concludes "Because of the terrible effects of this beating, there's no question that Jesus was already in serious to critical condition even before the nails were driven through His hands and feet." (page 17) 

When Jesus reached the execution site, the Romans used spikes (five to seven inches long and tapered to a sharp point) to nail Him to the cross.  The spikes were driven into Jesus' wrists*, going through the place where the median nerve runs.  ..  The pain would have been absolutely unbearable.** Next the cross would have been hoisted into position and nails were then driven through Jesus' feet, again causing excruciating pain as nerves were crushed.  The stress on Jesus' body would have been hard to fathom.  "First of all, His arms would have immediately been stretched, probably about six inches in length, and both shoulders would have become dislocated…." (Psalm 22 Old Testament prophecy foretold this condition hundreds of years earlier: "My bones are out of joint".) (page 19) 

Dr. M. next points out that "Once a person is hanging in the vertical position, crucifixion is essentially an agonizingly slow death by asphyxiation."  He describes the horrific process as follows:  "The stresses on the muscles and diaphragm put the chest into the inhaled position; basically, in order to exhale, the individual must push up on his feet so the tension on the muscles would be eased for a moment.  In doing so, the nail would tear through the foot, eventually locking up against the tarsal bones………After managing to exhale, the person would then be able to relax down and take another breath in. Again he'd have to push himself up to exhale, scraping his bloodied back against the coarse wood of the cross.  This would go on and on until complete exhaustion would take over, and the person wouldn't be able to push up and breathe anymore…….As the person slows down his breathing, he goes into what is called respiratory acidosis-the carbon dioxide in the blood is dissolved as carbonic acid, causing the acidity of the blood to increase.  This eventually leads to an irregular heartbeat.  In fact, with  His heart beating erratically, Jesus would have known that He was at the moment of death, which is when He was able to say, ‘Lord, into your hands I commit my spirit.'  And then He died of cardiac arrest." (page 20) 

Dr. M. also discusses John's observation that, after the soldier plunged the spear into Christ's side, he saw  both blood and a clear fluid coming out of Him.  Dr. M.  states that "Even before Jesus died, the hypovolemic shock would have caused a sustained rapid heart rate that would have contributed to heart failure, resulting in the collection of fluid in the membrane around the heart, called a pericardial effusion, as well as around the lungs, which is called a pleural effusion."  This is undoubtedly what John witnessed. (page 21) 

In order to speed up death, it was the custom of the Roman soldiers to drive a short Roman spear into the victim's lower leg bones.  This would prevent him from pushing up with his legs so he could breathe.  "Of course, we're told in the New Testament that Jesus' legs were not broken, because the soldiers had already determined that He was dead,  they just used the spear to confirm it.  This fulfilled another Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah, which is that his bones would remain unbroken."  (page 23) 

Dr. M. concludes that there is no possible way that Jesus could have left the cross alive. To speculate that He just swooned on the cross he responds, "It's a fanciful theory without any possible basis in fact." (page 25) 

To discuss the "empty tomb" Mr. Strobel interviews Bill Craig, teacher and author, possessor of several degrees including a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Birmingham, England and a doctorate in theology from the University of Munich.  

Mr. Craig begins his apologetic for the empty tomb (and Christ's resurrection) by citing the creed of the early church, a statement that "undoubtedly goes back to within a few years of Jesus' crucifixion, having been given to Paul, after his conversion, in Damascus or in his subsequent visit to Jerusalem when he met with the apostles James and Peter." (page 36)  The creed*** is "essentially, a four-line formula.  The first line refers to the crucifixion, the second to the burial, the third to the resurrection, and the fourth to Jesus' appearances after the resurrection….The creed is actually a summary that corresponds line by line with what the Gospels teach." (page 37) 

Mr. Craig addresses the "supposed" contradictions in the four Gospel accounts, of which skeptic Charles Templeton has said, "The four descriptions of events….differ so markedly at so many points that, with all the good will in the world, they cannot be reconciled." (page 44)  However, Mr. Craig points out the difference between a historian's view of events and a philosopher's:  "For a philosopher, if something is inconsistent, the law of contradiction says,  ‘This cannot be true, throw it out!'  However, the historian looks at these narratives and says, ‘I see some inconsistencies, but I notice something about them:  they're all in the secondary details.'  The core of the story is the same:  Joseph of Arimathea takes the body of Jesus, puts it in a tomb, the tomb is visited by a small group of women followers of Jesus early on the Sunday morning following his crucifixion, and they find out that the tomb is empty.  They see a vision of angels saying that Jesus is risen………..The careful historian, unlike the philosopher, doesn't throw out the baby with the bath water.  ….We can have great confidence in the core that's common to the narratives and that would be agreed upon by the majority of New Testament scholars today, even if there are some differences concerning the names of the women, the exact time of the morning, the number of the angels, and so forth.  Those kinds of secondary discrepancies wouldn't bother a historian."  (pages 45,46) 

Mr. Craig also addresses many other questions that doubters raise and ends his defense of the empty tomb as follows: 

1. "The empty tomb is definitely implicit in the early tradition that is passed along by Paul in I Corinthians 15, which is a very old and reliable source of historical information about Jesus. ***
2. The site of Jesus' tomb was known to Christian and Jew alike.  So if it weren't empty, it would be impossible for a movement founded on belief in the resurrection to have come into existence in the same city where this man had been publicly executed and buried.
3. We can tell from the language, grammar, and style that Mark got his empty tomb story – actually, his whole passion narrative – from an earlier source.  In fact, there's evidence it was written before AD 37, which is much too early for legend to have seriously corrupted it.
4. There's the simplicity of the empty tomb story in Mark.  Fictional apocryphal accounts from the second century contain all kinds of flowery narratives, in which Jesus comes out of the tomb in glory and power, with everybody seeing him including the priests, Jewish authorities, and Roman guards. Those are the way legends read, but these don't come until generations after the vents, which is after eyewitnesses have died off.  By contrast, Mark's account of the story of the empty tomb is stark in its simplicity and unadorned by theological reflection.
5. The unanimous testimony that the empty tomb was discovered by women argues for the authenticity of the story, because this would have been embarrassing for the disciples to admit and most certainly would have been covered up if this were a legend.
6. The earliest Jewish polemic presupposes the historicity of the empty tomb.  In other words, there was nobody who was claiming that the tomb still contained Jesus' body.  The question always was, ‘What happened to the body?'  The Jews proposed the ridiculous story that the guards had fallen asleep.  Obviously, they were grasping at straws.  But the point is this:  they started with the assumption that the tomb was vacant!  Why?  Because they knew it was!!"  (pages 53, 54)

Finally, Mr. Strobel addresses the issue of "eyewitnesses", interviewing Dr. Gary Habermas, author of seven books on the resurrection and former president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.  Dr. Habermas begins by bluntly stating that "there's no descriptive account of the resurrection…..nobody was sitting inside the tomb and saw the body start to vibrate, stand up, take the linen wrappings off, fold them, roll back the stone, wow the guards, and leave".  (page 63)  However, in response to Mr. Strobel's question, "Doesn't this hurt your efforts to establish that the resurrection is a historical event?" Dr. Habermas replies, "No, this doesn't hurt our case one iota, because science is all about causes and effects.  We don't see dinosaurs; we study the fossils.  We may not know how a disease originates, but we study its symptoms.  Maybe nobody witness a crime, but police piece together the evidence after the fact.  So, here's how I look at the evidence for the resurrection:  First, did Jesus die on the cross?  And second, did he appear later to people?  If you can establish those two things, you've made your case, because dead people don't normally do that." (pages 63, 64) 

In the Gospels we read of the following appearances of Jesus following His resurrection: 

• To Mary Magdalene, in John 20: 10-18

• To the other women, in Matthew 28: 8-10

• To Cleopas and another disciples on the road to Emmaus, in Luke 24: 33-49

• To eleven disciples and others, in Luke 24: 33-49

• To ten apostles and others, with Thomas absent, in John 20: 19-23

• To Thomas and the other apostles, in John 20: 26-30

• To seven apostles, in John 21: 1-14

• To the disciples, in Matthew 28: 16-20

• And He was with the apostles at the Mt. of Olives before His ascension, in Luke 24: 50-52 and Acts 1: 4-9 

In addition, Peter states in The Book of Acts, "God has raised Jesus to life"  and quotes the patriarch David, who prophesied that the Christ would not be abandoned to the grave, nor His body see decay. (Acts 2: 29-35).   In I Corinthians 15 Paul states in part "..that He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.  After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time………then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all He appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born." (I Cor. 15: 3-8) 

Towards the end of presenting this evidence,  Mr. Strobel quotes British theologian Michael Green:  "The appearances of Jesus are as well authenticated an anything in antiquity….There can be no rational doubt that they occurred, and that the main reason why Christians became sure of the resurrection in the earliest days was just this.  They could say with assurance, ‘We have seen the Lord.'  They knew it was He.'" (page 82) 

In concluding his short book, Mr. Strobel gives his personal testimony.  After beginning his investigation of the resurrection as a spiritual skeptic, he states that he came to the stark realization that that Biblical account of the birth, death, burial and resurrection are true, and he began to understand the implications of what this revelation would have to mean in his own life:  "If Jesus overcame the grave, He's still alive and available for me to personally encounter.  If Jesus conquered death, He can open the door of eternal life for me too.  If He has divine power, He has the supernatural ability to guide and transform me as I follow Him.  As my Creator who has my best interests at heart, He rightfully deserves my allegiance and worship." (page 88) 

Mr. Strobel continues, "Because of the evidence, I now believed Jesus to be the Son of God.  But to become His child, it was necessary for me to receive the free gift of forgiveness that He purchased with His life on the cross.  So on November 8, 1981, I talked with God in a heart-felt and unedited prayer, admitting and turning from all of my wrongdoing, and receiving the free gift of forgiveness and eternal life through Jesus.  I told Him that with His help I wanted to follow Him and His ways as best I could from that moment forward………………………Over time my character, values, attitude, priorities, worldview, philosophy, and relationships began to change-for the good.   So much so that a few months after I became a follower of Jesus, our five-year-old daughter, Alison-who had previously only known a father who had been profane, angry, verbally harsh, drunken, and all too often absent-walked up to my wife and said, ‘Mommy, I want God to do for me what he's done for Daddy.'" (pages 88, 89) 

If this book review has encouraged any of you to continue to seek after truth, it is my prayer that you will purchase and read Mr. Strobel's book and others such as Josh McDowell's The Resurrection Factor.  Whisper a prayer to the God  you're not sure exists, and ask HIM to guide you to the truth about HIM. (page 90) 

*In order for the nails to hold, they would have had to have been driven through the wrist.  Although the Scriptures say that "the nails pierced His palms", in the language of the day the wrist was considered to be part of the hand. (page 18)

**Because the pain was beyond words to describe, they had to invent a new word: excruciating, which literally means "out of the cross." (page 19)

***I Corinthians 15: 3-8:  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 Peter, and then to the Twelve.  After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, 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 (Paul), as to one abnormally born."