Is there evidence that Jesus rose from the dead?

Yes - and the strongest evidence is also the earliest. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 the apostle Paul writes, "I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins... that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day... and that he appeared." Paul is quoting an earlier, formal creed that he himself had received. Most critical scholars - including sceptics such as the atheist New Testament professor Gerd Ludemann - date this confession to within roughly two to five years of the crucifixion, far too early to be a slowly growing legend. The bedrock claim of the resurrection is traceable to the first handful of years after the events, not to "decades later" as the worry usually goes.

From that early core, historians work with a set of facts that the large majority accept regardless of their own beliefs. Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried. His tomb was found empty (the most disputed item on this list). Many different people, in different times and settings, sincerely reported seeing him alive afterwards - including a sceptical brother, James, and an outright enemy, Paul, both transformed into bold witnesses. And the first disciples were willing to suffer and die rather than recant what they claimed to have seen. The debate among historians is usually not about whether these things happened, but about what best explains them.

This is where the alternatives have to be weighed fairly - each one has a real question to answer. Hallucination is the most discussed - but hallucinations are private experiences, and they do not fit group appearances or account for an empty tomb. Theft or a moved body does not explain why the disciples would knowingly die for what they knew to be false. Legend cannot do the work either, because the creed is dated too early for myth to have crowded out memory. Each theory can address one fact, but each strains to explain the whole set together. The resurrection, by contrast, accounts for the early creed, the empty tomb, the appearances, and the transformed witnesses simply and at once. That is why it remains, on the historian's own terms, the best explanation of the evidence. "He is not here; he has risen" (Matthew 28:6).