Did Jesus rise from the dead?

No human who actually died has ever come back to life. 

However, the cornerstone of Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus. So how did this belief come about?

To understand this, one needs to briefly talk about the gospels.

Gospel means ‘good news’.

Gospels are the 4 biographies of Jesus written by his biographers Mark, Mathew, Luke and John called ‘evangelists’ meaning ‘bringing good news’. Their true identities have not been discovered so far.

The first 3 gospels of Mark, Mathew and Luke are similar; hence they are called ‘synoptic’ (meaning ‘with one eye’) gospels.

Gospel of John is quite different.

Approximate times the gospels were written:

Mark      – A.D. 70

Mathew – A.D. 80

Luke        - A.D. 90 (The only gentile, the rest being Jews)

John        - A.D. 100

Mark, a diehard fan of Paul, was written around 70 A.D. a few years after Paul’s death. It contains the messages that Paul preached projected backwards into the life of Jesus. E.g. he has copied more or less verbatim what Paul wrote about turning bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ at the last supper.

Mathew and Luke base their narratives on Mark.

According to Tabor, the original manuscripts of the gospel of Mark, ending at 16:8 says nothing about Jesus rising from the dead. It appears some pious scribes (people who makes copies of the bible) made up the versus 9-20 sometime in the 4^th century reflecting the various appearances of Jesus to different people after his resurrection.

Paul, it seems, was the one who made up the stories of Jesus rising from the dead. In a letter he wrote to the Corinthians around 54 A.D. he claims to have received this information about the resurrection of Jesus through a ‘vision’. The gospels of Mathew, Luke and John were written between 40 to 70 years after Jesus'  death and in the meantime, Paul’s stories of Jesus’ resurrection had become the cornerstone of the Christian faith.