For generations, skeptics have offered up various theories in attempts to refute the historicity of the resurrection of Christ. Many of these ideas are remarkably sophomoric. All have been throughly discredited. Here is a sampling:
1. Wild animals came and ate the body.
2. The disciples, or else the authorities, stole the body.
3. Jesus wasn’t really dead, he just passed out.
4. Everyone who saw him after the resurrection was hallucinating.
5. The women and men who saw the empty tomb were at the wrong location.
Any attorney will readily assent to necessity of consistent and reliable evidence in a judging a case’s veracity. Years ago, British Attorney J.N.D. Anderson wrote concerning the testimony given to the resurrection. He said, “Evidence must be considered as a whole. It is comparatively easy to find an alternative explanation for one or another of the different strands which make up this testimony. But such explanations are valueless unless they fit the other strands which make up the testimony as well. A number of different theories, each of which might conceivably be applicable to part of the evidence but which do not themselves cohere into an intelligible pattern, can provide no alternative to the one interpretation which fits the whole.”
“He is risen, as He said!”