Resurrection of Christ. Fundamental tenet of Christianity, that Jesus was raised from the dead by God ‘on the third day’ after his crucifixion. It was part of the earliest Christian preaching (the kerygma). All four gospels record that Jesusʾ tomb was found empty on Easter Sunday morning, but no one would have come to believe that he had been raised from the dead on that basis alone. According to Paul and the gospel writers (except Mark?) the cause of the belief was Jesusʾ appearances to his followers (beginning with Peter: Luke 24. 34). Scholars who discount the appearances of Jesus as the cause of the Easter belief usually hold a ‘theological theory’ instead: the disciples, reflecting on Jesusʾ death, believed that it could not have been the end, and came to faith that God had raised him up; but in the Jewish context, and in the context of the fact of the crucifixion, there is no serious possibility that theological theories of this kind are correct.

Already in the New Testament the theological significance of the resurrection is variously expressed: as God's vindicating Jesus and raising him to his right hand in heaven (Acts 2. 34–6); as an anticipation of the general resurrection (1 Thessalonians 4. 14); as Christ's victory over death (1 Corinthians 15. 57); and as the basis of the new life of Christians (Romans 4. 24).

Muslims deny the resurrection of Christ, believing that he did not die on the cross at all; and the Aḥmadīyya maintain that he went on to preach in India, and believe that they can identify his tomb.