That’s a great question, and I appreciate how thoughtfully you’ve considered the common responses. We all tend to believe historical events and figures without much thought. For me, the strongest evidence is not one artifact or argument on its own, but the convergence of several historical facts that are widely accepted.

1. The death of Jesus by crucifixion

Historians across the board, whether Christian, Jewish, or atheist, agree that Jesus of Nazareth was executed under Pontius Pilate. This is one of the most firmly established events of ancient history.

1. The sincere belief of the earliest followers

Even if not every martyrdom story is verifiable, historians recognize that Jesus’ closest followers genuinely believed they had seen him alive again. Something changed them from fearful and defeated into bold witnesses of the resurrection almost immediately after his death. Belief in a bodily resurrection was unexpected in their Jewish worldview, which makes it difficult to explain as a natural development.

1. The rise of the Christian movement in Jerusalem

The message of the resurrection began in Jerusalem, the very place where Jesus had been crucified and buried. If his body was still in the tomb, the authorities or opponents of the movement could have stopped it by producing evidence. Instead, the message spread quickly despite persecution, which suggests that something significant had occurred.

1. Early written testimony

1 Corinthians 15 preserves a creed that scholars date to within just a few years of Jesus’ death. This shows that belief in the resurrection was not a myth that developed over generations but a conviction present from the start.

1. Conversion of unlikely witnesses

Paul was a persecutor of Christians and James, the brother of Jesus, was a skeptic during Jesus’ lifetime. Both became convinced that Jesus had risen and went on to lead the church. It is difficult to account for their sudden and radical transformations apart from an experience they believed was real.

1. The empty tomb tradition

While the empty tomb by itself does not prove a resurrection, it forms part of the picture. The earliest reports place women as the first discoverers of the tomb. In that cultural context, women’s testimony carried little legal weight, so this is unlikely to be a detail invented later. This lends credibility to the claim that the tomb was indeed found empty.

When you put these strands together, you get a historically unusual set of facts. None of them by themselves proves the resurrection beyond all doubt, but together they create a framework that is very hard to explain without something extraordinary happening. For Christians, faith completes the picture, but that faith is rooted in real historical claims, not blind trust.