Did Jesus Christ Really Rise from the Dead?
Short Answer
Yes. The Catholic Faith teaches as a revealed dogma that Jesus Christ truly died upon the Cross, was buried, and on the third day truly rose from the dead. His Resurrection was not merely the survival of His soul, a vision in the minds of His disciples, a symbolic statement that His message continued, or a temporary return to ordinary mortal life. The same Jesus who had been crucified rose bodily, His human soul reunited to His true human body, now glorified and no longer subject to death.
This is also a claim rooted remarkably early in the historical record. St Paul, writing within the first Christian generation, says that he is transmitting what he himself had received: Christ died, was buried, rose on the third day, and appeared to Cephas, the Apostles, more than five hundred brethren, James, and finally Paul himself. Paul adds that many of the five hundred were still alive when he wrote. The older Catholic Encyclopedia dates First Corinthians to about A.D. 57. Thus belief in the Resurrection was not a legend that developed centuries after Christ; it belonged to the proclamation of Christianity from its beginning.
The Gospels add the empty tomb and repeated appearances of the risen Christ. They portray frightened and initially unbelieving disciples who become convinced that Jesus is alive. Luke expressly distinguishes Jesus from a spirit: Christ tells them to examine His hands and feet and says, “a spirit hath not flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39). John describes the wounds and the scepticism of St Thomas, who responds after encountering the risen Christ: “My Lord, & my God” (John 20:28).
Historical argument by itself is not identical with supernatural faith. Catholic theology teaches that faith rests ultimately upon the authority of God revealing. Nevertheless, the First Vatican Council taught that God provides external signs—especially miracles and prophecies—so that faith is consonant with reason, and explicitly rejected the assertion that miracles are impossible or can never be known with certainty. The Resurrection therefore stands both as a mystery of faith and as the supreme historical sign confirming Christ's divine mission.
Why This Question Matters
Christianity stands or falls with the Resurrection.
St Paul says so with exceptional clarity. If Christ has not risen, Christian preaching is vain, Christian faith is vain, the Apostles are false witnesses, Christians remain in their sins, and those who have died in Christ have perished. He does not present the Resurrection as an inspirational addition to Christianity; he makes it the factual foundation upon which Christianity depends.
This makes the question unusually suitable for serious investigation. Christianity does not merely ask a person to adopt a philosophy or admire the moral teaching of Jesus. It makes a claim about something that happened in history: a particular man was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried, and subsequently appeared alive.
If Jesus remained dead, then His extraordinary claims about Himself require a radically different explanation. If He truly rose from the dead, however, His claims cannot reasonably be treated as those of merely another religious teacher.
The Resurrection also tells us what Christianity means by salvation. Christ did not abandon His humanity. He conquered death. The Catholic hope is therefore not simply that an immortal soul survives death, but that the human person will ultimately share in the resurrection of the body.
The risen Christ is, in St Paul's language, the “first fruits of them that sleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20).
What the Catholic Church Teaches
Sacred Scripture
The most concentrated apostolic testimony occurs in 1 Corinthians 15. St Paul tells the Corinthians:
“I delivered unto you first of all which I also received...”
— 1 Corinthians 15:3
He then identifies the content he had received: Christ died for sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, rose on the third day, and appeared to witnesses.
The sequence is important: death — burial — resurrection — appearances.
Resurrection concerns the Jesus who had actually died and been buried, not merely the continued existence of His soul or His influence upon His followers.
The Gospel accounts make the bodily character even clearer. Matthew records the empty tomb and the angel's declaration concerning the crucified Jesus:
“He is not here, for he is risen” (Matthew 28:6).
The women are invited to inspect where His body had lain.
Luke describes the disciples as frightened because they initially think they are seeing a spirit. Jesus answers precisely that objection. He identifies Himself, directs attention to His hands and feet, invites examination, and subsequently eats in their presence. Luke therefore deliberately excludes the interpretation that the disciples merely encountered a disembodied spirit.
John likewise records Mary Magdalen discovering the tomb empty, Peter and John finding the burial cloths, Christ appearing to the disciples and showing His hands and side, and Thomas refusing to believe until confronted with the wounds of the Crucifixion. The risen Jesus is therefore presented as continuous with the crucified Jesus.
The Council of Trent and the Creed
The Resurrection is not a disputed theological opinion. It belongs to the Catholic Creed.
At its third session on 4 February 1546, the Council of Trent solemnly placed the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed at the foundation of its proceedings, describing it as the symbol in which all who profess the Christian faith must agree. Concerning Jesus Christ, the Creed professes that He suffered and was buried and “rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures.”
Council of Trent, Session III: Symbol of Faith
Thus the proposition that Christ truly rose from the dead is dogma of divine and Catholic faith. A Catholic is not free to reinterpret the Resurrection as merely metaphorical.
The Roman Catechism
The Catechism of the Council of Trent, explaining the fifth article of the Creed, is unusually precise about what “resurrection” means.
It teaches that after Christ truly died, His human soul was reunited with His body on the third day, so that He returned to life. It also distinguishes Christ's Resurrection from persons miraculously restored to mortal life before Him: they eventually died again, whereas Christ rose to immortal life and “dieth now no more.” (Sancta Clara Press)
The Catechism further teaches that Christ rose by His own divine power. Scripture sometimes says that the Father raised Him; this refers to Christ according to His humanity. Christ's ability to rise by His own power belongs to Him according to His divinity. The Catechism consequently calls the Resurrection a powerful confirmation of His divinity.
Roman Catechism, Part I, Article V — Donovan translation, pp. 50–56
This distinction is important. The Catholic claim is not that Jesus merely recovered from severe injuries. He truly died. Nor is it merely that God restored Him to the same mortal condition He had possessed previously. Christ rose in a glorified state, victorious over death.
St Thomas Aquinas
St Thomas Aquinas makes the same point in the Summa Theologiae, III, q.54, a.1. A true resurrection requires that the same body which died be reunited with the same soul. If Christ's post-Resurrection body had merely been imaginary, St Thomas explains, the Resurrection would have been only apparent rather than real. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q.54
In III, q.53, St Thomas also explains why the Resurrection is central to Christian faith: among its purposes is the confirmation of faith in Christ and the completion of the saving work associated with His Passion.
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q.53
The First Vatican Council: Miracles and Reason
A sceptic may object before examining the evidence that dead men simply do not rise and therefore resurrection accounts must be rejected in advance. Catholic teaching rejects that method.
The First Vatican Council's dogmatic constitution Dei Filius teaches that supernatural faith is not produced simply by human reasoning. We believe revealed truths ultimately because of the authority of God who reveals and cannot deceive.
But the same Council teaches that God has provided external proofs of revelation, especially miracles and prophecies, as signs accessible to human reason. It formally condemns the proposition that miracles are impossible, that the Scriptural accounts of them must consequently be treated as myths, or that miracles can never be known with certainty.
First Vatican Council, Dei Filius — official Vatican Latin text
Dei Filius — English transcription
Catholic apologetics therefore avoids two opposite errors. It does not say that historical evidence itself produces supernatural faith; grace is necessary. But neither does it claim that faith requires believing without evidence.
Historical and Theological Evidence
The Resurrection Proclamation Is Extremely Early
One of the most important facts in assessing the Resurrection is chronology.
First Corinthians did not originate centuries after Jesus. The old Catholic Encyclopedia dated the letter to approximately Easter A.D. 57. Whatever precise chronology one adopts, this unquestionably places the epistle within the first Christian generation. (New Advent)
More importantly, Paul does not introduce the death and Resurrection tradition as something he has just formulated. He says that he received it and subsequently delivered it to the Corinthians.
That means the tradition itself is earlier than the letter.
Paul then names Cephas, the Apostolic group, more than five hundred brethren, James, all the Apostles, and finally himself. He even observes that many of the five hundred remained alive. We should not exaggerate this into a claim that a modern historian personally interviewed five hundred witnesses. We possess Paul's statement, not five hundred surviving depositions. Nevertheless, Paul's manner of writing is significant: he presents the Resurrection as a recent event attested by identifiable and, in many cases, still-living persons. (Douay-Rheims Bible)
This creates a major difficulty for the theory of gradual legendary development. Whatever development may have occurred in the telling of particular episodes, belief that Christ died, was buried, rose, and appeared to witnesses already existed in the earliest recoverable Christian proclamation.
The Empty Tomb
All four canonical Gospels present the tomb as empty on the first day of the week.
Matthew records the women finding the tomb opened and being told that the crucified Jesus had risen. Luke records that the women entered but did not find the body. John provides the additional detail of Peter and the beloved disciple entering and observing the linen cloths. (Douay-Rheims Bible)
The empty tomb by itself would not prove resurrection. A missing body can theoretically have several explanations. This is an important distinction.
But the Christian case does not rest upon the empty tomb by itself. It combines the empty tomb with claims of repeated appearances of the man whose tomb was empty.
A theory of theft may attempt to explain an absent body but does not by itself explain why numerous disciples came to believe they had encountered Jesus alive. A theory of visions might be invoked to explain experiences but does not by itself account for the empty tomb. The explanatory burden therefore concerns the evidence taken together.
They Claimed to Encounter Jesus Bodily
The Gospel narratives are strikingly resistant to an interpretation in which Jesus simply “lived on” spiritually.
Luke directly raises that possibility by saying the disciples thought they were seeing a spirit. Christ's reply is physical: hands, feet, flesh and bones, touch, and food.
John likewise places physical continuity at the centre of the Thomas episode. Thomas specifically demands evidence involving the nail wounds and Christ's side. When Jesus later appears, He confronts Thomas with precisely those wounds. (Douay-Rheims Bible)
Nor does Paul's language naturally reduce to “the disciples felt Jesus' presence.” The same passage speaks of death, burial and being raised; and the remainder of 1 Corinthians 15 concerns resurrection of the dead rather than the mere immortality of the soul. (Douay-Rheims Bible)
Catholic doctrine therefore has good Scriptural grounds for insisting that the Resurrection was bodily.
The Witnesses Were Not Portrayed as Eager Believers
The Gospel writers do not depict the disciples as confidently awaiting Easter morning.
Luke has them frightened and initially supposing they have encountered a spirit. John portrays Thomas refusing the testimony of the other Apostles. Mary Magdalen initially interprets the empty tomb as removal of the body rather than resurrection.
That does not, by itself, prove that every detail must be historical. But it matters when considering a simple wish-fulfilment theory. The sources themselves portray doubt, confusion and alternative interpretations before conviction.
St Paul Is a Particularly Difficult Witness to Explain Away
Paul's testimony deserves separate attention because he was not originally one of Jesus' followers.
In the same passage where Paul reports an appearance of the risen Christ to himself, he openly states that he had persecuted the Church of God. His conversion therefore cannot naturally be explained as a bereaved disciple seeing what he desperately hoped to see. (Douay-Rheims Bible)
This does not mean that Paul's testimony, considered in isolation, proves the Resurrection. A critic can propose psychological, visionary or neurological explanations. But such explanations must account for the character of Paul's own testimony: he knew himself to have been an opponent of the Church and nevertheless came to regard an encounter with the risen Christ as decisive.
Furthermore, Paul places his own experience in continuity with the appearances claimed by Cephas, the Apostles, James and the other witnesses. He does not present himself as originating a new form of Christianity independently of them.
The Resurrection Was Not a Later Nicene Invention
Evidence from the generation immediately following the Apostles makes the point still clearer.
St Ignatius of Antioch, who died during the reign of Trajan, wrote to the Smyrnaeans against those who reduced Christ's humanity to appearance. He insists that after the Resurrection Christ was still possessed of flesh and refers to the disciples touching Him and to His eating and drinking with them.
St Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, chapters 2–3
St Polycarp likewise writes to the Philippians of Jesus Christ, who suffered unto death and whom God raised from the dead. His letter repeatedly assumes the Resurrection as part of the faith already received by the churches.
St Polycarp, Epistle to the Philippians
First Clement likewise speaks of Jesus Christ as the first-fruit of the future resurrection, raised by God from the dead.
First Clement, chapter 24, Lightfoot translation
These texts are not independent eyewitness depositions proving Easter. That would overstate what they establish. What they do establish is that a real and bodily Resurrection belonged to very early Christianity. The idea that bodily resurrection arose only after centuries of doctrinal development is historically untenable.
What About Differences Between the Gospel Accounts?
The Resurrection narratives do not read like four photocopies of a single report. They select and arrange events differently. Questions arise concerning the number and sequence of women at the tomb, the angelic appearances, and the ordering of appearances in Jerusalem and Galilee. This should not be concealed.
Indeed, the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledged that the partial Gospel accounts may “appear at first sight hard to harmonize.” Yet it also observed their agreement on the central claim that the risen Christ appeared to His followers.
Catholic Encyclopedia: “Resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1911)
A historical case for the Resurrection does not require us first to establish an indisputable reconstruction of every minute of Easter morning. The central propositions are much broader and substantially convergent: Jesus had been crucified and buried; His tomb was subsequently found empty; His followers claimed encounters with Him alive; these encounters were understood as resurrection rather than mere spiritual survival; and belief in that Resurrection is demonstrably present in the earliest Christian proclamation.
The Main Objection
The strongest objection is not simply, “People do not normally rise from the dead.” Christians agree that people do not normally rise from the dead.
The more serious objection is this:
Historical investigation can establish only that some early Christians believed Jesus had risen. It cannot establish that God actually raised Him from the dead. Since miracles are extraordinary, a historian should prefer some natural explanation—even one we cannot presently identify—over a supernatural one.
This objection deserves serious treatment because it distinguishes two questions that are often confused:
Did the earliest Christians sincerely believe that Jesus appeared to them after His death?
Did Jesus actually rise from the dead?
The first is a question about human testimony and history. The second includes a claim about divine action.
Response
There is an important truth in the objection: historical reasoning is not a laboratory in which the Resurrection can be reproduced. Nor does historical argument compel supernatural faith as though faith were the inevitable conclusion of a syllogism.
Catholic theology agrees. Dei Filius teaches that faith is a supernatural virtue produced with God's grace and rests formally upon God's authority as revealer.
But it does not follow that historians must exclude divine action before examining the evidence.
If someone defines “historical explanation” as “natural explanation,” then of course a miracle can never be his conclusion. But the conclusion has been excluded by definition rather than disproved by evidence. That is a philosophical commitment to methodological or metaphysical naturalism, not a historical discovery.
The real question is whether resurrection is a possible explanation of the evidence. If God does not exist, the answer is no. But if there are independent rational grounds for God's existence—and that question belongs earlier in this FAQ series—then divine action cannot simply be ruled impossible.
This is precisely why Vatican I rejected the proposition that miracles are intrinsically impossible or incapable of certain recognition. Catholicism does not ask the sceptic to believe every miracle story. It insists instead that each claim must be judged on its evidence, without imposing beforehand a rule that God is never permitted to act.
The Resurrection hypothesis also possesses an explanatory unity that competing reconstructions often lack. It explains why the tomb was found empty, why the disciples claimed repeated appearances, why those appearances were understood bodily, why resurrection became central rather than peripheral to Christian preaching, and why an opponent such as Paul became a herald of the very message he had opposed.
A naturalistic account can be constructed, but it usually does so by dividing the evidence: perhaps the body was removed, while some disciples experienced bereavement visions, while Paul underwent a separate religious experience, while bodily details arose later, while other appearance traditions were legendary. Such a reconstruction is logically possible. What must be asked is whether it actually explains the sources more naturally than the claim the sources themselves make.
An unspecified “something natural must have happened” is not yet an historical explanation. It is a decision about what kinds of explanations will be allowed.
Common Objections
“Could the Disciples Have Hallucinated?”
Individual religious visions and grief experiences certainly occur. Therefore it would be irresponsible to argue that hallucination is psychologically impossible. The difficulty is explanatory scope.
The sources do not report only a single bereaved disciple having a private experience. Paul records appearances to Cephas, the Apostolic body, more than five hundred brethren, James, the Apostles collectively, and himself. The Gospels additionally portray encounters involving conversation, recognition, wounds, touch and meals. (Douay-Rheims Bible)
A hallucination theory can therefore function only if some portions of the testimony are accepted while others are reclassified as later development, misunderstanding or literary construction. That may be argued, but it must actually be demonstrated rather than assumed.
It also leaves the empty-tomb tradition requiring a separate explanation.
“Perhaps Someone Stole the Body”
A stolen body could explain why a tomb was empty. It does not explain why the Apostles sincerely proclaimed that they had encountered Jesus alive.
If the disciples themselves knowingly removed the body, the Resurrection proclamation becomes deliberate fraud. That theory then has to explain why the earliest preaching was organised around a claim its principal preachers knew to be false.
If someone else removed the body, the theory has to be combined with another explanation of the appearances.
The problem is not that such combinations are logically impossible. It is that multiplying independent explanations can make the reconstruction increasingly ad hoc.
“Perhaps Jesus Never Really Died”
The so-called swoon theory proposes that Jesus survived crucifixion and later emerged alive.
But the earliest proclamation explicitly distinguishes His death, burial and Resurrection. The Roman Catechism likewise insists on the reality of Christ's death before His Resurrection. (Douay-Rheims Bible)
More fundamentally, survival is not resurrection. A severely injured man who escaped death would still be mortal. Yet the Christian proclamation from the beginning is that death itself had been conquered and that Christ rose to immortal life.
The swoon hypothesis must therefore explain not merely an unexpected survival, but why those who saw Jesus became convinced that He had entered an entirely new state of victorious, glorified life.
“Isn't the Resurrection Just a Legend That Developed Over Time?”
This objection encounters perhaps its greatest difficulty in 1 Corinthians 15.
Paul was already preaching the Resurrection before writing the epistle. The Corinthians had already received that preaching. And Paul describes the death, burial, Resurrection and appearances as material which he himself had previously received. (Douay-Rheims Bible)
Whatever arguments may be advanced about the date or literary development of particular Gospel narratives, one conclusion is extremely difficult to avoid: the Resurrection proclamation itself is primitive, not medieval, Nicene or fourth-century.
Ignatius, Polycarp and Clement then demonstrate its continuation into the earliest post-apostolic generations. (New Advent)
“Why Aren't the Gospel Accounts Identical?”
Independent testimony does not have to be verbally identical to converge upon a central event.
Differences can certainly raise genuine historical questions, and alleged contradictions must be considered individually rather than dismissed with slogans. Some sequences can be harmonised; others are less certain because each Evangelist has selected only part of the events.
But variation in secondary details does not logically negate agreement concerning the central propositions.
The older Catholic treatment by Anthony Maas was candid on precisely this point: the Easter narratives form a complex tableau and can initially appear difficult to harmonise, yet the Evangelists converge upon the risen Christ's appearances. (New Advent)
What We Can and Cannot Conclude
Established Catholic doctrine: Jesus Christ truly died, was buried, and truly rose from the dead on the third day. His Resurrection was bodily, involving the reunion of His human soul with His true human body. He rose glorified and immortal and will die no more. This is an article of the Catholic Creed, not a theological opinion.
Established Catholic doctrine concerning miracles and faith: miracles are possible and can serve as certain external signs of divine revelation. Supernatural faith nevertheless rests formally upon God's authority revealing and requires divine grace; it is not merely the product of historical probability.
Certain traditional theological teaching: Christ rose with the same true body that had died, although glorified. St Thomas explains that an imaginary body would make the Resurrection merely apparent rather than true. The Roman Catechism also teaches that Christ rose by His own divine power.
Established historical evidence: First Corinthians belongs to the first Christian generation, and its fifteenth chapter already contains the proclamation of Christ's death, burial, Resurrection and appearances. Paul explicitly says that this material was something he had previously received. Early writers such as Ignatius, Polycarp and Clement show that belief in the Resurrection continued immediately into the post-apostolic Church.
Historically strong but debated conclusion: the empty tomb is multiply attested in the Gospel tradition and forms an important component of the Resurrection case. Its historicity is strongly defensible, but historical critics do not unanimously accept every detail of the Easter narratives. It should therefore not be presented as though every historical scholar has reached precisely the same conclusion.
Disputed historical questions: the exact minute-by-minute sequence of the appearances, the precise ordering of the women's visits to the tomb, and the manner in which every Gospel detail should be harmonised remain subjects of exegetical discussion. These questions do not amount to a dispute within Catholic dogma over whether Christ rose.
What historical reasoning alone cannot do: it cannot produce supernatural faith by human argument alone, nor can it prove divine causation in the same way a repeatable physical experiment establishes an ordinary natural process. It can, however, investigate testimony, establish chronology, compare competing explanations and determine whether belief in the Resurrection has serious rational grounds.
What is not necessary to establish the argument: the case does not depend upon proving the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, identifying every apostle's precise manner of martyrdom, resolving every archaeological question about Christ's tomb, or appealing to later private revelations. Those subjects may be investigated separately, but Christianity's foundational Resurrection evidence exists independently of them.
Conclusion
Did Jesus Christ really rise from the dead? The Catholic answer is unequivocally yes.
The Church professes as revealed truth that the Jesus who was crucified under Pontius Pilate truly died, was buried and rose bodily on the third day. The Resurrection was neither metaphor nor vision, neither the continued existence of His soul nor a return to ordinary mortal life. Christ rose in the same human body in which He had suffered, now glorified and victorious over death.
The historical evidence does not begin centuries later. St Paul, within the first Christian generation, records an already-received tradition of Christ's death, burial, Resurrection and appearances and names numerous witnesses. The Gospels provide the empty-tomb tradition and insist that the risen Jesus was bodily present. The earliest post-apostolic writers continue exactly this belief.
No single historical datum proves the entire case by itself. An empty tomb alone would not prove resurrection. A private vision alone would not prove resurrection. The force of the argument is cumulative: the death and burial of Jesus, the empty tomb, the very early appearance tradition, the bodily character of the claimed encounters, the transformation of the Apostolic proclamation, the testimony of Paul as a former persecutor, and the absence of any period in which Christianity existed without Resurrection faith.
Naturalistic alternatives remain logically conceivable, but they generally explain only portions of this evidence and require additional hypotheses for the remainder.
For someone investigating Christianity, therefore, the Resurrection cannot reasonably be dismissed as a late legend or a pious metaphor. It presents a genuine historical claim demanding an explanation. And if Jesus Christ truly rose from the dead, then the central question changes. It is no longer merely, Was Jesus an interesting religious teacher? It becomes:
Who is He,
what authority does He possess, and
what did He establish for man's salvation?
That leads naturally to the next stages of the Christian and Catholic inquiry.
Primary Sources
Sacred Scripture
1 Corinthians 15, especially vv. 1–20. St Paul's received tradition concerning Christ's death, burial, Resurrection and appearances.
Original Douay-Rheims: 1 Corinthians 15Matthew 28, especially vv. 1–10. The women at the tomb and proclamation of the Resurrection.
Original Douay-Rheims: Matthew 28Luke 24, especially vv. 1–12 and 36–48. Empty tomb; risen Christ's flesh and bones; eating before the disciples; Apostolic witness.
Douay-Rheims: Luke 24:36–51John 20, especially vv. 1–10, 19–29. Empty tomb, burial cloths, wounds and St Thomas.
Original Douay-Rheims: John 20
Council of Trent, Session III, Decree Touching the Symbol of Faith, 4 February 1546. Profession that Christ rose on the third day according to the Scriptures.
Council of Trent, Session III: Symbol of Faith
Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part I, Article V, “He Descended into Hell; the Third Day He Arose Again from the Dead,” trans. Rev. J. Donovan, 1829, printed pp. 50–56.
Roman Catechism, Article V — Donovan 1829 transcription
First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, 24 April 1870, Chapter III and Canons on Faith, especially the teaching concerning external signs of revelation and miracles.
Official Vatican archive — Dei Filius, Latin text
Dei Filius — English transcription
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q.53, especially aa.1–4, on Christ's Resurrection.
Summa Theologiae III, q.53 — Latin and English
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q.54, especially a.1, on the reality of Christ's risen body.
Summa Theologiae III, q.54 — Latin and English
St Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, chapters 2–3, on Christ's true bodily Resurrection.
Epistle of St Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans
St Polycarp of Smyrna, Epistle to the Philippians, especially chapters 1–2 and 9.
Epistle of St Polycarp to the Philippians
St Clement of Rome, First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 24.
First Clement, chapter 24 — Lightfoot translation
Further Reading
Anthony Maas, S.J., “Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 12, New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur. A useful pre–Vatican II synthesis of the Scriptural evidence, harmonisation questions and older alternative theories.
Catholic Encyclopedia: Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Cornelius a Lapide, Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15. A major pre-modern Catholic exegetical treatment of St Paul's Resurrection chapter. The Original Douay-Rheims presentation below includes access to traditional commentary alongside the text.
1 Corinthians 15 — Original Douay-Rheims and traditional commentary
Catholic Encyclopedia, “Epistles to the Corinthians.” Useful for the older Catholic treatment of authorship, circumstances and dating of First Corinthians.
Catholic Encyclopedia: Epistles to the Corinthians
Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Ignatius of Antioch.” Background on one of the earliest post-apostolic witnesses to the bodily Resurrection.
Catholic Encyclopedia: St. Ignatius of Antioch
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