If you devote your life to Jesus Christ–a man who claimed to be God in the flesh, and who promised a millennial kingdom and eternal life to anyone who repents and believes in Him–does that make you part of a cult? How can you know whether the Christian faith is of divine origin or merely a manifestation of cultish human phenomena? In this three-part series, let’s briefly examine the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, the nature of Jesus in context of modern cult worship, and how one might discern whether the cultivation of Christianity is based on authentic design or cultish forgery.

The Nazarene cult

Before the word “cult” took on its modern definition of a group’s harmful allegiance toward an abusively charismatic leader, it was simply a word associated with any practice which “cultivated” worship towards a deity. In Jesus’ day, cults were part of the religious norm as paganism, emperor worship and the Pantheon of gods in Greek mythology were still a vibrant part of Roman culture. In fact, shortly after the death of Julius Caesar, Halley’s comet shone through the Roman sky and was believed to be the divine spirit of Caesar returning to heaven.

Likewise, Julius’ successors Caesar Augustus and Tiberius Caesar Augustus, who reigned during the lifetime of Jesus, were declared to be physical sons of god based on Caesar’s lineage. However, in Jesus’ final moments, the Roman centurion who was responsible for witnessing and reporting His death to Pontius Pilate, “stood there in front of Jesus,” “saw how he died” and declared that, “‘Surely this man was the Son of God!’” (Mark 15:37-39, New International Version).

While worship of the gods was a critical element of the culture in Jesus’ day, neither Jew nor Roman could have predicted that this new, so-called, “cult of the Nazarenes” who believed in Jesus’ divinity would change the course of human history (Acts 24:5). Because, unlike the imperial cult of His day, Jesus not only claimed to be the one and only Son of God, but He also substantiated His claims of divinity through His bodily resurrection from the dead.

Motives and mythology

Scholars and historians across the spectrum of worldviews can agree on three historical facts: that Jesus Christ was killed by Roman crucifixion, His tomb was empty after His burial, and individuals and groups of people witnessed Him after His death—and testified of His bodily appearances very early on.

Skeptics in Jesus’ day undoubtedly accused the disciples of stealing His body from His tomb; however, even those who didn’t believe in His resurrection from the dead did not claim that His body was still in the tomb or that He survived the crucifixion. “Frankly, it would have been impossible for Christianity to get off the ground in Jerusalem if Jesus’ body were still in the tomb. The Roman or Jewish authorities could have simply gone over to his tomb, viewed his corpse, and the misunderstanding would have been over’’ (Michael Licona, PhD, as quoted in the book In Defense of Jesus, p. 130). Yet, according to believers and unbelievers, Jesus had died, and three days and nights after His death, His tomb was empty.

Further, it is not probable that His body was stolen after His crucifixion for numerous reasons. The Jews, had they stolen His body, would’ve reinforced what His followers believed—that He would die and be resurrected on the third day, and therefore, be divine as He had “blasphemously” claimed (John 10:31-33). The Romans, who crucified Jesus in order to appease the Jews and settle the civil unrest, wouldn’t have taken His body because it would’ve elevated their existing tensions with the Jews. Additionally, stealing His body would have supported another “cult” in Roman society which eventually rivaled the imperial cult worship of Caesar.

Jesus’ followers, likewise, would have had nothing to gain by stealing His body and everything to lose, as their testimonies would’ve been a lie which they paid for with their lives—a feat that is psychologically highly unlikely. And Jesus’ tomb was guarded for the sole purpose of preventing any claims of His resurrection from gaining traction in His following, adding another layer of improbability to this idea. The only motive which makes sense in this situation, is that those who wanted to discredit Jesus’ claims of divinity and His resurrection would’ve had a motive to claim that His followers stole the body in order to account for it being missing; which is exactly what we see recorded in the ancient biography of Jesus, known as the book of Matthew (Matthew 27:63-66; Matthew 28:11-15).

After the death of Jesus, the apostle Paul reminded the Corinthians of a creed he gave them, “that Christ died for our sins . . . He was buried . . . [and then raised on] the third day according to the Scriptures’’ (1 Corinthians 15:3-4, NIV). “We know that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians between AD 55 and 57. He indicates in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 that he [had] already passed on this creed to the church at Corinth, which would mean it must [have predated] his visit there in AD 51” (Gary Habermas, PhD, DD as quoted in The Case for Christ, p. 338). That means he gave this creed to them within twenty years of Jesus death—and even further, Paul was also converted and based this testimony on his personal eyewitness of Jesus, which is believed by scholars to have taken place within A.D. 32-38, just a few years after the death of Jesus (Acts 26:12-18; Galatians 1:11-19)! “So this [was] incredibly early material—primitive, unadorned testimony to the fact that Jesus appeared alive to skeptics like Paul and James, as well as Peter and the rest of the disciples” (Habermas, p. 339).

This is far too early to presume these accounts were based in mythology, because Paul claimed that Jesus had appeared not only to himself but “to more than five hundred [people] at the same time, most of whom [were] still living” at the time he wrote this (1 Corinthians 15:6, NIV). These witnesses could have been readily cross-examined and corroborated by new converts, and so, Paul challenged them to search out whether or not their testimony was true because, “if Christ [had] not been raised, [their] preaching [was] useless and so [was] their faith” (1 Corinthians 15:14, NIV).

Unlikely suspects

When Jesus made claims of being the incarnation of God and promised Messiah, His brother, named James, was not convinced by Him. And when Jesus’ believers started claiming that they saw Him after His death, Saul, who belonged to the Jewish sect of the Pharisees, also thought that these claims were so dangerous that he persecuted and killed those who were carrying on this idea. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that these two individuals would have been duped into Christianity based on the fanciful claims of Jesus’ following.

Yet, we find that both James and Saul (later named Paul), became converts and martyrs for Jesus Christ after they personally witnessed Him alive after His death. It was not that they believed in His divinity and then witnessed Him resurrected; it was that they didn’t believe in His divinity, and then witnessed Him after His crucifixion. They became so convinced of seeing Him that even from a predisposition of disbelief, they became willing to die for their testimonies. This makes it increasingly doubtful that their accounts were something they willfully invented for the sake of attention, and more likely that it was based on the authenticity of events of which they were eyewitnesses.

When we look at the beginnings of Christianity, the entire belief structure hinges on one historical fact: that Jesus was raised from the dead. If He was not raised from the dead, then Christians are, as Paul said, “most pitiable” (1 Corinthians 15:19). Because, if He was not raised from the dead then His following was merely a demonstration of a cultish phenomenon. However, if Jesus was raised from the dead that changes everything, and His claims of divinity are worth further investigation. So, let’s take a deeper look into the person of Jesus from another dimension, and examine His merit in the context of our modern understanding of cult leaders. Join me next time for part two!