What problems does the resurrection of Christ present?

BarcelonaThe Christian calendar of celebrations has just celebrated the resurrection of Christ. Every believer has an absolute right to believe that this phenomenon occurred. From the perspective of mere reason, however, it seems that such a phenomenon is not credible.

The resurrection of Christ presents several purely textual problems. One has to do with the sequence of events narrated in the Synoptic Gospels, with some variations: if Christ said he would rise again three days after his death, and he died at the "ninth hour," or three in the afternoon, on a Friday, mathematics dictates that he should have risen the following Monday, not Sunday. Another has to do with the disappearance of his remains after Joseph of Arimathea buried Christ in a tomb he had built himself, still in Jerusalem.

John says that only Mary Magdalene ventures to visit Jesus's tomb and informs Peter that the body has disappeared. Peter goes, but expresses a certain distrust of such a marvelous event: let us not forget that he was an illiterate and uneducated fisherman. The rest of the apostles, following a custom very common in every patriarchal society, rather laugh at Magdalene's explanation. Luke, who was more educated, places great emphasis on the resurrection itself, given that the Jewish Pharisees of the first century believed in the resurrection of the body—a very late belief in the history of the Jewish people, still a source of debate—unlike the Sadducees, who believed that everything ends with death. Mark, on the other hand, is told that the three Marys went to the tomb and found it empty, but they did not tell anyone—because it seemed inconceivable to them—nor did Jesus ever appear again in body and soul.

There are other oddities from the perspective of narrative consistency: the subsequent ascension of Jesus takes place in Jerusalem in Mark's Gospel, but in the Acts of the Apostles it happens on the Mount of Olives, in Bethany. As for the date of the ascension, Mark places it on Easter Sunday (as all Christians do, still today), but according to Acts it happened forty days after Jesus' death.

According to secular scholars, several hypotheses prevail regarding the disappearance of Jesus' body: someone desecrated the tomb and took the body; Jesus' body was stolen by his disciples; the tomb that was found empty was not the one in which Christ had been buried; Jesus was buried with his disciples, and he washed and roasted himself. Perhaps it is useless to know all this, but reason has always searched every ground before being forced to send a rarity into the realm of faith.