This week, many Jamaicans, with most of the 2.38 billion Christians (not all) worldwide, celebrated Easter by enjoying the beaches, eating buns, and like good Christians flocked the churches.

Easter celebration often starts at Good Friday and on to Easter Sunday. Good Friday? Why “good”? In old English, good may have referred to as holy. Another possible reason is it ties with Easter Sunday, which celebrates the resurrection of Christ. Christ couldn’t have resurrected without dying. The day of his death (Good Friday) is in a sense good — a victory over death and sin.

Even munching a bun has religious meaning. The Jamaican Easter bun is a descendant of hot cross buns traditionally eaten on Good Friday in Britain, and the cross symbolised the crucifixion of Jesus.

Was there a crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus? As the apostle Paul aptly declared, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is empty, and your faith is in vain. ” (1 Corinthians 15:14) If the resurrection of Jesus is unbelievable, then so is Christianity. A man rising from the dead is an extraordinary claim. We can only believe it if we have extraordinary evidence. Do we?

There are only two sources of evidence that Jesus rose from the dead and resurrected. From the gospels and early Christian writings, including Paul’s epistles. The gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (the first is Mark, written about 40 years after Christ died) — are written by people who never knew Jesus, and not written by those after whose names they were named. What we do know about the Gospels were written with a deliberate aim to turn people towards belief in Christ. They were written long after Paul’s epistles. We know in the gospels there was much meddling, not to mention wild fantastic stories.

The Gospel of Peter, one of the earliest resurrection story, has a tall Jesus whose head reaches beyond the sky, men coming out of the tomb with heads touching the sky, and a speaking cross. Matthew has similar cosmic dimensions a tad less fantastic, earthquakes and walking dead people. Even the famous story of the adulteress saved by Jesus’s famous quip, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone (John 7: 53 -8:11) is believed by some to be a forgery.

The Gospel according to Mark (the first Gospel) was not written as history, but as a deliberate embellishment by the others. Consider one myth. Pontius Pilate, on the annual holiday when the Jews wanted to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus in his place (Mark 15: 6-15), no Roman magistrate, least of all the infamously ruthless Pilate, would let a rebel go. The ceremony emulates the Jewish ritual of the scapegoat and atonement: Two sons of the father (Barabbas means son of the father in Aramaic) and Jesus (son of the father). One is released bearing the sins of Israel, while the other is sacrificed so his blood may atone for the sins of Israel. This is an imitation of the Yom Kippur ceremony of Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement. As an historical fact, this story is hopelessly implausible; as a myth it makes perfect sense. For all these reasons we can’t trust the gospels as historical accounts.

Of the 21 epistles supposedly written by Paul, scholars agree that only seven are likely authentic. Paul declares some 10 or 15 years before the first gospel, “This is the gospel I preached. That according to the scriptures, Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried, and he was raised on the third day, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12.” (1 Corinthians 15: 1-8) He indicates he received this statement from scripture and revelation. He had no idea who the living Jesus was. With the exception of the crucifixion, resurrection, and the Last Supper, which he transforms from a narrative into a liturgical formula.Paul does not name a single event from Jesus’ life.

How did belief in the resurrection come about? During his life, Jesus was regarded as the Messiah by his disciples. They believe he would raise an army, call down the wrath of God on the enemy, etc. The crucifixion completely disconfirmed this ideal. But then they came to believe Jesus had been raised from the dead (the empty tomb, visions of Jesus after the crucifixion) and this reconfirmed what had earlier been disconfirmed. He really is the Messiah and the Jewish apocalyptic preacher came to be considered god. Paul, our earliest “witness” to the resurrection, says nothing about the empty tomb. Some scholars suggest that the empty tomb and the appearance of Jesus after his death originated independently and were put together later in the gospels, expanded, and embellished over the years.

If the resurrection occurred it would have to be a miracle; a violation of the laws of nature. If an event purported to be a resurrection occurred today it could possibly be tested by science. Even then, after 2,000 years, this incredibly unique event would be more credible if there were well-documented, independently corroborated evidence from multiple and reliable sources.

Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Roman Senate in 44 BCE. The evidence for this is without question. Like Adam and Eve, Jonah and the whale, and the virgin birth, the resurrection may be a myth, a metaphor which addresses our psychological attitude to death, or our need to die and be “reborn” with a new orientation to life. Theologians, of course, have their own arguments for why the resurrection is true: Paul had a vision (people who have visions tend not to doubt what they have seen) of the resurrected Christ and the empty tomb. The tomb being found by women, some see this as ‘evidence’ because a fictional resurrection concocted in those sexist times would not involve the testimony of women.

The resurrection is not an historical event. It falls outside the scope of history and into the realm of faith. Even if there is indisputable evidence against it, believers would still continue to believe. We’ll let a theologian have the last word — they usually do).

If science told me that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was impossible, I would disbelieve that, and continue to believe what the Bible teaches, because if you take away resurrection, there is no Christian faith.

Dr Ethon Lowe is a medical doctor. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or ethonlowe@gmail.com.