No gospel describes the resurrection itself, only an empty tomb and appearances
Christianity calls the resurrection its central mystery, yet none of the four gospels narrates the moment Jesus rose. They report an empty tomb and later sightings. The oldest written trace is a short creed Paul quoted to the church at Corinth, which most scholars think he inherited from believers before him.
The creed appears in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15. It lists in compact order that Christ died, was buried, was raised on the third day and appeared to Cephas, to the twelve, to a crowd of more than five hundred, to James and finally to Paul himself. Scholars widely agree it predates the letter. The Jewish historian of religion Geza Vermes called it a tradition Paul received from his seniors in the faith; its roots probably lie in the Jerusalem community, though Hans Grass argued for Damascus, and Paul Barnett dated its transmission to around AD 34.
The gospels tell the aftermath differently. The shorter ending of Mark stops at the empty tomb, where three women meet a young man in white. Matthew adds appearances to two Marys and to the disciples on a mountain in Galilee. Luke has two travellers meet Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and Acts describes forty days of appearances before the ascension. The phrasing drew on Hebrew scripture: raised on the third day echoes Hosea, and dying for sins echoes Isaiah.
The idea of bodily resurrection had its own history. In Jewish writings it first surfaces in the Book of Watchers in the 3rd century BC and in Daniel in the 2nd, possibly as a rising of the soul alone; some scholars read Daniel as imagining the dead reborn as fleshless, star-like angels. According to Josephus, first-century Sadducees denied any afterlife, Essenes believed only the soul lived on, and Pharisees expected the body to be raised to house an immortal soul. Early Christians sat closest to the Pharisees.
Interpretations still diverge. Secular and liberal Christian scholars attribute the belief to visionary experiences and inspired readings of scripture. Historians of Jesus often avoid the question as a matter of faith, and they differ on whether the burial and empty tomb are historical. Gnostics held that only the soul rises, and mainstream Islam teaches that Jesus was not crucified at all but taken up to God.
Source: Resurrection of Jesus
