John 20:11-18, Luke 24:13-35, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8
Forty Days of Evidence
The resurrection of Jesus was not a single, brief event whose claim depends on one or two witnesses. In the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension, Jesus appeared repeatedly to a wide range of people in a variety of circumstances — providing, as Luke puts it, "many convincing proofs" (Acts 1:3).
Paul's early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 catalogs the appearances: to Peter, to the Twelve, to more than five hundred brothers at one time, to James, to all the apostles, and finally to Paul himself.
The Major Appearances
Mary Magdalene at the tomb (John 20:11-18). The first person to see the risen Jesus was a woman — a detail no first-century Jewish author inventing a story would have included, since women's testimony carried no legal weight. The details are intimate: she mistakes Him for the gardener, He speaks her name, she recognises Him.
The road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). Two disciples walking from Jerusalem, joined by a stranger who opens the Scriptures to them — "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." Recognised in the breaking of bread; vanishing immediately.
The upper room — Thomas absent (John 20:19-23). Jesus appears through locked doors, shows His wounds, commissions the disciples, and breathes the Spirit on them. The physical evidence of continuity — the wounds — alongside the extraordinary capacity to appear through locked doors.
The upper room — Thomas present (John 20:24-29). Thomas's "unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails..." is met with a direct invitation to touch the wounds. His response: "My Lord and my God!" — the highest Christological confession in John's Gospel.
The beach breakfast (John 21:1-14). The disciples fishing on the Sea of Galilee, a stranger on the shore directing them to the right side, the miraculous catch, the charcoal fire, the breakfast. The extraordinary made domestic.
What the Resurrection Body Was Like
The resurrection appearances reveal that the risen body of Jesus was both continuous with His pre-resurrection body (same wounds, recognised by people who knew Him, ate food) and transformed (appearing through locked doors, vanishing, apparently not always immediately recognisable). This pattern shapes Paul's teaching on the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15 — sown perishable, raised imperishable; the same person, gloriously transformed.