Risen: fictional or historical?
Risen, in the spirit of Mel Gibson’s Passion, is a forthcoming blockbuster film about the first few days after Christ’s resurrection. It tells the tale from the perspective of a roman soldier, who, tasked with disproving the resurrection, finds his assumptions challenged and his worldview shattered. I love historically responsible depictions of Biblical and classical events, and I can’t wait for this film to appear.
But is the film accurate? Does its story depict things the way they (probably) were, or is its tale-telling too fanciful? I haven’t seen the movie yet, but the fact – surprising perhaps – is that the historical evidence for Christ’s bodily resurrection is actually quite strong for such an ancient event. Consider the following three points.
First, there were numerous people in a number of different circumstances who encountered Jesus after his death. These stories appear in the Biblical gospels and they were attested to by other ancient writers as well. True, the writers of ..