The Resurrection as a historical event
Header Image: The Resurrection by Luca Giordano (1632–1705)
Table of Contents
What with Easter still ringing in our ears, I thought it would be a good time to revisit the topic of resurrection, but from a historical standpoint and why we can trust it as a real, world-changing event. So, what really is the resurrection? How will we be resurrected, and what does it mean for us that Jesus rose again? Let’s explore what this means for us as Christians, and see what the Scriptures say.
Jesus was raised bodily – and historically
Let’s look at the way Jesus was resurrected first, since he is the “firstfruits” of the resurrection (1 Cor 15:20-23).
The historical, bodily resurrection of Christ is central to our faith. Without it, we may as well pack up and go home, which Paul makes clear to the Corinthian church:
1 Corinthians 15:12-15
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
I saw a survey recently about this very topic, which suggested that a worrying amount of self-identifying Christians in Britain don’t believe that the resurrection of Jesus happened at all!
Fewer than one-in-three Christians in Britain believe “word-for-word” the Biblical story of Jesus rising from the dead … A survey for the BBC carried out to mark Palm Sunday found that 23 per cent of those calling themselves Christians “do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead” at all. [Source: telegraph.co.uk]
The resurrection is what makes Christianity unique!
Despite the misinformation that circulates on the internet, Jesus isn’t just a carbon-copy of previous “dying and rising gods” from Egypt and Greece – mainly because none pre-date Christianity!
The consensus among modern scholars — nearly universal — is that there were no dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity. They all post-dated the first century. [Source: y-jesus.com]
It’s this uniqueness and reality which impacts our lives and changes us from within, because the “Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells” in us (Rom 8:11)! Think about that for a moment. The power that raised Christ from the dead – that incredible force of God; the very life giving Spirit of the universe, dwells in US!
Christians might do all those [good works], but that is not the core of their faith. It is the result of their faith. They do those things as the musician plays music or the athlete plays his sport. They do those things because they are talented and it gives them joy. So the Christian does these good things because he has been filled with the Spirit of the risen Jesus Christ and he does those things with joy because he wants to. [Source: patheos.com]
Recently, the Shroud of Turin has been in the news again, as it has been recently authenticated again, which shows that it may not be a medieval forgery or piece of art! If you’ve not heard of this “Shroud of Turin”, it’s an ancient burial cloth which bears the image of a man who has been crucified, obviously meaning to be of Jesus. It attracts attention because of its unique nature and that it appears to be a negative image somehow imprinted on the cloth in an inexplicable way:
Giulio Fanti of Padua University ... In 2012 … concluded that an electrical charge in the form of radiation is what likely caused the man’s image to be imprinted on the Shroud. He has also dated the Shroud to the time of Jesus, debunking the flawed carbon-14 testing conducted in 1988.
You can read more about the recent study and its results here: nationalreview.com.
Now obviously, the truth of the resurrection doesn't rely on the Shroud’s authenticity; but if the Shroud is authentic, then it just adds further weight to what Christianity proclaims.
Imagine the level of power that must have happened to make something like that, and that is the same Spirit which lives in us! Just think about it, the death of Jesus caused an earthquake across all of Jerusalem, how much more power was there in the life of God coming back in resurrection? Maybe a similar process of how “nuclear shadows” were created? It’s speculation, but it’s definitely interesting.
Evidence from Paul
Paul talks a lot about Jesus in a spiritual, post-resurrection way; but he does give us a couple of references to the historic Jesus too. In his letter to the Corinth church there is one such example of what happened after the resurrection:
1 Corinthians 15:3-8
(v.6) “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.”
After a quick run-down of the Gospel and how Jesus rose again, Paul highlights a little tidbit of info which is him basically saying, “if you don’t believe me, you can go an ask those people!” He’s saying, “don’t just take my word for it”, because there are living witnesses all over the place who can testify to this fact, not just the small group of Apostles.
Aside from this, Paul’s own life and testimony is a pretty solid proof of the resurrection of Jesus. Paul was taught by the best, had a high position, well respected etc. (Acts 22:3 cf. Acts 5:34; Phil 3:4-6; 2 Cor 11:22); basically he was living the life – and then decided to throw all of that away and endure shipwrecks, beatings, lashings, torture, stoning, hunger and homelessness (see 2 Cor 11:23-27 for the full run-down of Paul’s sufferings!), just for something that may or may not have happened, a convincing story or fable?
No, Paul met the real, risen Christ, and it threw his old life out of the window!
The mystery of the resurrection
We get a small glimpse into the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection from Peter and Paul in their letters where Peter explains that Jesus “went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:18-19) – “prison” being the place of the dead for those people from times of old who had died. Paul also, in his letter to the Ephesians, follows up on this same event when he says that Jesus, “who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things” and that in doing so “he made captivity itself a captive” (Eph 4: 8-10).
Death itself is captive to Jesus because he holds the keys to Death and Hades (Rev 1:18), and dare I say, this moment when the Light of the World went down into the shadowy darkness of Sheol, it was possibly the first and last time there was ever any light in that gloomy place!
Ignatius gives us an early insight into the understanding of this descending and rising out of that “prison” Hades (or Sheol in Hebrew), by linking it to the event in Mat 27:52 –
“For Says the Scripture, ‘Many bodies of the saints that slept arose,’ their graves being opened. He descended, indeed, into Hades alone, but He arose accompanied by a multitude” – Ignatius to the Trallians, ch. IX
The nature of the resurrection
Firstly, the resurrection is spiritual.
Though spiritual isn’t the only type of resurrection taught in the New Testament, many people think that’s it’s purely a physical act only.
Many times in Scripture when speaking of baptism, it is used and described as a symbolic act of dying and being raised with Christ into a new creation, despite keeping our “old” bodies in the meantime (see Col 2:12; Col 3:1; Eph 2:5-6; Rom 6:4). This, I believe, is why there was such an emphasis on the importance of baptism in the early Church, and why it’s something sacred we should also highly esteem and not take lightly.
While these verses (and many others) make it clear that through baptism we die to our old selves and are raised anew in Christ, we must also understand that this prefigures our future resurrection when we finally “put on immortality” (1 Cor 15:53-54). Though we will eventually die physically in the body, we won't die at all because death is defeated and it has no sting nor power over us!
In ancient times (and probably still today) accepting the resurrection of Jesus, and our future selves, was a major sticking point for new converts, or those interested in the faith. Even the Jewish leaders couldn’t agree in on this let alone Gentiles! Resurrection was a totally new concept to expect to receive personally, or to happen at all; even the Jewish sect of the Sadducees didn’t believe it – just see Acts 23:8 for that.
Paul spends quite some time on the resurrection and explaining what it means and how it will be, though it is a topic that will always be limited by our human understanding. This is why the nature of the resurrection is always contrasted with the putting on of new clothes or in building a new tent, or the sowing of seeds. Even if you don’t have a farming background, it’s still easy to understand the concept of what is being said here in terms of our physical, mortal body being removed like an outer garment, and being replaced with something better (1 Cor 15:44; 2 Cor 5:1-2).
It is quite rightly a mystery, as Paul says!
Justin Martyr gives a good analogy in his great work, First Apology, when trying to explain this concept of the resurrection to a Roman emperor, and contrasts it with “human seed” (ie. sperm);
[If I] were to show you human seed and a picture of a man, and were to say with confidence that from such a substance such a being could be produced, would you believe before you saw the actual production?
– St. Justin Martyr: First Apology
Basically, if you’d never known human growth, and someone showed you a drop of fluid and a photo of an adult and said one produced the other, would you believe it if you hadn’t already witnessed it to be true? In the same way then, the resurrection happens, and it can only be accepted by those who are willing to believe something which seems impossible, but will “in God's appointed time, rise again and put on incorruption”.
The resurrection is more than physical
I prefer to use the word “glorified” with regards to our resurrection because saying “physical” just isn't adequate enough to describe the mystery of what our bodies become.
Our new bodies will be similar to our current physical bodies, but not the same – not limited like our earthly bodies are; in the same way Jesus was changed, we too shall also be transformed “into the likeness of His glorious body” (Phil 3:21)!
In the same way that spiritual beings such as angels can become “physical” in appearance, they aren't the same as we are now. Much like when Jesus ascended to the Father and later appeared to his disciples, he was no longer the same human Jesus they once knew (2 Cor 5:16).
Despite eating and drinking (Luke 24:39-43) and seeming the same as before, he now appeared in their midst behind locked doors (John 20:19); travelled with people in an unrecognisable form – or could control other’s perceptions of him until required (Luke 24:15-16), and the could also disappear in the blink of an eye (Luke 24:31)!
Christ was raised physically, initially, but then his body was different. Glorified, not human.
Origen captures this concept well in his book Contra Celsus;
“After his resurrection, Christ existed in an intermediate state, as it were. For it was somewhere between the physicalness of the body He had before his sufferings and the appearance of a soul uncovered by such a body. It was for this reason that … Jesus came and stood in [the disciples] midst, even though the doors were shut.”
– Origen, Contra Celsus, Book II, ch.62
So what is the resurrection? It is a mystery of something which is deeply spiritual, yet also joined in the flesh of renewed bodies. It is hope for our future and peace over death, and encouragement for those who have had people they love die (1 Thess 4:13-14).
It is something we can rejoice in now through our baptism and new spiritual life in Christ by his Spirit within us, which makes us a new creation (2 Cor 5:17).
It is strange co-joining of this world and the heavenly realms where, despite still being in our tarnished flesh, we are also seated with Christ up high (Eph 2:6), waiting until the day in which we finally put on immortality and join our Lord in a restored creation.
Amen!
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January 6th marks the day in the liturgical calendar when the arrival of the Magi visiting baby Jesus with their gifts is celebrated. But with it comes the often distressing account of what is known as the Massacre of the Innocents. Matthew places this moment of revelation of Jesus as King alongside one of the darkest episodes in his Gospel, and it’s a stark contrast: one King is here to bring peace on earth, as the angels declared, the other king brought death and destruction. For some readers, this raises an immediate historical question. If Herod truly ordered the killing of all the male children under two in Bethlehem, why does no other ancient historian mention it? Josephus, after all, delights in cataloguing Herod’s cruelty. He records the execution of Herod’s wife, his sons, and numerous political rivals. Herod was paranoid and vicious. As for Herod, if he had before any doubt about the slaughter of his sons, there was now no longer any room left in his soul for it; but he had banished away whatsoever might afford him the least suggestion of reasoning better about this matter, so he already made haste to bring his purpose to a conclusion. He also brought out three hundred of the officers that were under an accusation … whom the multitude stoned with whatsoever came to hand, and thereby slew them. — Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 16.11.7 So, why the silence here about Bethlehem? The answer, I would say, isn’t anything nefarious or made-up by Matthew, but just something simply down to scale. Bethlehem Was a Very Small Place Bethlehem in the early first century was not a city. It was a village — small, agricultural, and politically insignificant. Most historians estimate its population at somewhere between 300 and 1,000 people, with around 500 being a sensible midpoint. Once we factor in ancient demographics, the numbers become surprisingly modest. Modern demographic research into pre-industrial societies consistently shows that nearly half of all children died before adulthood, with the highest concentration of deaths occurring in the first two years of life. These findings align closely with conditions in Roman-period Judea and support conservative estimates for the number of infants living in a small village such as Bethlehem. Source: Mortality in the past: every second child died — Our World in Data In pre-modern societies with high infant mortality, only about 2–3% of the population would be living children under the age of two at any given time. Many children were born; far fewer survived those earliest years. Applying a conservative 2.5% figure to Bethlehem gives us roughly: 7–8 children under two in a village of 300 12–13 children under two in a village of 500 25 children under two even at the extreme upper estimate of 1,000 inhabitants Herod’s order, however, targeted male children only. Statistically, that halves the number. This places the likely number of victims somewhere between three and twelve boys. Matthew’s reference to ‘Bethlehem and the surrounding region’ does slightly widen the scope of Herod’s order, but not by enough to change the demographic picture. Even when nearby settlements are included (e.g. farmsteads, shepherd settlements, etc. not major cities/towns), the total number of children under two likely remained in the dozens rather than the hundreds, maybe anywhere between 14–45 boys maximum if we make an educated estimate. This is entirely consistent with what we know of population size and infant mortality in the ancient world. This is an important number to realise and consider. Not because the deaths are insignificant simply due to being so few, but because ancient historians did not record history the way we do now. A small number of peasant children killed in an obscure village would not have registered as a notable event alongside palace intrigue, royal executions, or political upheaval. For Josephus, it wou...
Luke J. Wilson | 13th December 2025 | Christmas
How can God beget a Son? Does that mean Jesus is His creation? This question comes sharply into focus during Advent, when the Church contemplates the Incarnation: the eternal Son entering the world as a baby in Mary’s womb. And to understand this, we turn to language the Church has treasured for centuries — especially that crucial distinction between begotten and created. And C. S. Lewis describes this with a real concise clarity: We don’t use the words begetting or begotten much in modern English, but everyone still knows what they mean. To beget is to become the father of: to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers, and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a wireless set — or he may make something more like himself than a wireless set: say, a statue. If he is a clever enough carver he may make a statue which is very like a man indeed. But, of course, it is not a real man; it only looks like one. It cannot breathe or think. It is not alive. Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God, just as what man creates is not man. By saying that Jesus is begotten from the Father, we are saying that Jesus is fully God and not a creation of God (Arianism), nor is the Son of God simply a mode or action of God (Sabellianism). This is the heart of Christian theology: begotten = shared nature created = different nature Begotten Means “of the Same Essence” When the Father begets the Son, He is not constructing or manufacturing Him. Begetting is not an act inside time. It is an eternal relationship. Just as: light is never without radiance a fire is never without heat the Father is never without the Son There was never a moment “before” the Son existed. The Son is eternally from the Father, sharing His nature, His essence, His Godness. As John says in the opening of his Gospel, Jesus as the Son was/is “in the bosom of the Father”. This was historically understood that the Word always existed within the Father. When Christ Is Misunderstood: Modalism and Arianism Two ancient heresies emerge from misunderstanding “begotten, not made.” 1. Modalism (Sabellianism) This claims that: Father, Son, and Spirit are just different forms or roles of one person. This erases the real distinctions within the Trinity. If Modalism were true: Jesus is praying to Himself. The Father sending the Son is theatre. Christ’s baptism is a staged illusion. Modalism collapses the Persons into one persona wearing different masks. 2. Arianism Arius taught that: Jesus was created by God ex nihilo He is a divine-like being, but not equal in essence This makes Jesus the highest creature… but still a creature. If Jesus is created, then He cannot: reveal God perfectly unite humanity to God save us entirely and absolutely Only God can reconcile us to God. The Nicene Creed: Drawing a Line in the Sand At the Council of Nicaea (325 AD), the Church responded boldly and clearly: God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. This was a decisive boundary. begotten — of the same nature not made — not a creation of one being (homoousios) — equal in essence, not similar The Creed functioned like a theological guardrail. Christ is not “like God” — He is God. The creeds act as guardrails for orthodox interpretation Proverbs 8: Wisdom Begotten, Not Created The Fathers saw Proverbs 8 as speaking of the Son under the title “Wisdom”: The Lord begot me at the beginning of his work...
Luke J. Wilson | 31st October 2025 | Halloween
In our last post, we walked with Perpetua and Felicity through the sands of the amphitheatre, their faith outshining Rome’s cruelty. Now for the final part in this series, we turn to another of the Church’s earliest heroes — one whose courage was matched by an unexpected wit. His name was Lawrence, a deacon of Rome, remembered across centuries as the man who kept his humour even while lying on the griddle. The Setting: Rome, AD 258 Under Emperor Valerian, a fresh persecution of Christians swept through the Empire. Bishops, priests, and deacons were hunted down, their property seized, and their churches closed. The bishop of Rome at that time was Sixtus II — a gentle and wise shepherd who, like the apostles before him, was soon to drink from the same cup as his Lord. Among his closest companions was Deacon Lawrence, entrusted with overseeing the Church’s treasury and distributing alms to the poor. The Acts of St Lawrence tell us that when Sixtus was arrested and led to execution, Lawrence ran after him, crying out that he would not be left behind. Where are you going, father, without your son? Where are you going, priest, without your deacon? You never used to offer sacrifice without me as your minister! To which Sixtus replied: My son, I’m not leaving you. Greater trials are waiting for you. In three days you’ll follow me. Sixtus was beheaded soon after. Lawrence, meanwhile, was arrested and brought before the Roman prefect who, hearing that Lawrence had been the keeper of the Church’s wealth, demanded that he hand it over to the empire. The True Treasure of the Church The exchange that followed has been remembered ever since, partly for its irony, partly for its courage. “Bring forth,” said the prefect, “the treasures of the Church — the gold, the silver, and the precious vessels — that the emperor may possess them.” Lawrence asked for three days to gather them, which the prefect granted, no doubt imagining chests of glittering riches being prepared for him. Instead, Lawrence went through the city, gathering the blind, the crippled, the widows, the orphans, and all who were destitute or suffering. On the third day, he presented them before the prefect and declared: These are the treasures of the Church. Behold the gold and silver that I promised thee — the eternal jewels in whom Christ dwells. The prefect, enraged at being mocked, ordered that Lawrence be scourged and tortured, then laid upon an iron gridiron above a slow fire. The Martyrdom The ancient texts, mingling reverence and humour, tell the story that has echoed down the ages and had left an impact on me purely for the humour that I find in it! They laid him upon the iron bed, and beneath it kindled coals, that his flesh might be roasted little by little. And Lawrence, lying there, lifted up his eyes to heaven and gave thanks to God for counting him worthy to suffer. After some time, the account continues with words that have made Lawrence one of the most memorable of all martyrs: Having been a long time on the fire, he said to his tormentors with a cheerful countenance: ‘This side is done; turn me over and eat.’ It is difficult to read those words without laughing at how funny it sounds! It matches the kind of dark humour that I can have and often think of, which is probably why the story of Lawrence appeals to me so much, it’s the kind of silly thing I would think to say (though I’m not sure if I would in Lawrence’s place!). In the face of unbearable agony, Lawrence mocked his tormentors and even death itself. His humour was not flippant, but a final victory over the fear that his persecutors wanted to instil. His joke was an act of defiance against the gods whom Decius implored against the power of Christ within Lawrence. Despite how hot it must have been, Lawrence declares a worse fate on Decius, warning him of the fire he will face because of this, saying that the “burning c...
Luke J. Wilson | 29th October 2025 | Halloween
In the last post, we looked at Polycarp — a faithful bishop who faced the flames rather than deny his Lord. His courage in the face of certain death became a rallying light for generations of believers after him. But his story is only one among many in the long line of the cloud of witnesses who ran the race before us (Hebrews 12:1). Today, we step forward a few decades to another account of extraordinary faith — that of two women, Perpetua and Felicity. Perpetua left an account of her own martyrdom (technically a Passion) which is considered historically reliable. What makes it extraordinary is that Perpetua herself wrote a portion of it in Latin before her death, making it one of the earliest known writings by a Christian woman! It was then continued by another who witnessed the events once she entered the arena. The Setting: Carthage, AD 203 Our story takes us to North Africa during the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus. Christianity was still seen as a threat to the Roman order, and anyone refusing to sacrifice to the emperor’s image could be imprisoned or executed. Among the arrested were a small group of catechumens (new believers preparing for baptism) including a young noblewoman named Vibia Perpetua and her servant, Felicity. Perpetua was only twenty-two years old and the mother of an infant son. Her father, a pagan, begged her to renounce the faith and save her life, but she would not. In her prison diary — one of the earliest surviving Christian texts written by a woman — she records their suffering and her unshakable resolve and faith. After she was arrested with her companions, she wrote of a moment when her father came and tried to persuade her to sacrifice to the Emperor and deny her faith: When my father, out of love for me, tried to turn me from my faith, I said to him: ‘Father, do you see this vessel here — a water pot or whatever it may be? Can it be called by any other name than what it is?’ He answered, ‘No.’ Then I said to him, ‘So too I cannot call myself anything other than what I am — a Christian.’ A few days after this they were all baptised while imprisoned under house arrest awaiting their trial before being moved to the more restrictive Roman cells once they were formally condemned to die by wild beasts. After her baptism, the Spirit spoke to Perpetua and told her that she must “pray for nothing else after that water save only endurance of the flesh”. Perpetua and Felicity await their fate in the Roman prison The prison was dark, so dark she said she had “never known such darkness”, plus it was hot and crowded, the soldiers mistreated them all and she was trying to care for her child! Thankfully, later on a couple of deacons, Tertius and Pomponius, who were ministering to them managed to somehow pay the Romans to allow Perpetua and Felicity some respite in a better part of the prison where the child could be better fed and later handed off into the care of Perpetua’s mother. Dreams of Victory While in prison, Perpetua received a series of visions that strengthened her for what lay ahead. In one, she saw a golden ladder reaching up to heaven, guarded by a fierce serpent below, and sharp iron spikes along either side. Only those who stepped on the serpent’s head and climbed the ladder could enter. She interpreted this as her coming trial — the climb of faith through suffering to eternal life, realising that God wasn’t going to deliver her from this trial, but that it should be her passion (i.e. her death). It’s an image of triumph through endurance that echoes Christ’s own words: “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10). Felicity’s story is just as moving. She was heavily pregnant at eight months when arrested and gave birth in prison mere days before the execution. Roman law forbade torment of a pregnant woman, so she would have stayed in prison until the birt...
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Luke J. Wilson | 12th March 2026 | Eschatology
Something bizarre happened in the White House Oval Office this week. Photographs circulated on social media showing President Donald Trump seated at his desk, surrounded by approximately twenty Christian pastors from across the country, their hands extended towards him in prayer. The image provoked sharply divided reactions: some saw it as a moving expression of faith; others found it deeply unsettling. Whatever one makes of the optics, it arrived at a charged moment. Trump held a prayer meeting in the Oval Office after his administration admitted the war with Iran will likely last weeks longer than promised | Credit: Dan Scavino's X account Days earlier, reports emerged that a military commander had told troops that the current US war with Iran is “all part of God’s divine plan,” and that President Trump had been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” These were not fringe internet rumours. They were filed as formal complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) by an anonymous non-commissioned officer acting on behalf of fifteen service members — the majority of whom were themselves Christians. By Tuesday of that week, MRFF had logged more than two hundred similar complaints across fifty military installations, covering every branch of the armed forces. More than two dozen Democratic members of Congress have since called for a Department of Defense Inspector General investigation, citing what they describe as “glaring Constitutional concerns” and potential violations of DoD regulations on religious neutrality. The political questions about separation of church and state in the US are for others to address. What I want to do here is something more straightforward: examine what Revelation actually says, because the theology driving these claims does not hold up under scrutiny. And that matters here a lot; not as a partisan point, but as a question of biblical faithfulness. First, a Word About Context If you have read my previous article on Revelation some of what follows will be familiar ground. But it bears repeating, because the misunderstanding at the heart of this story is so widespread that it has taken on the feel of settled orthodoxy in many circles. The Book of Revelation is commonly thought to be written in the late first century ~95 AD, during or around the reign of Emperor Domitian. Though there is internal evidence that it was possibly written during Nero’s reign prior to 70 AD. Both of these emperors were most aggressive proponents of the imperial cult in Rome’s history. Domitian required that he be addressed as “lord and god,” had this title printed on coinage, and expected acts of religious reverence towards the Emperor as a demonstration of political loyalty. To refuse was to invite economic exclusion, marginalisation, and worse. Rome on seven hills It is into that precise context that John of Patmos writes. He is not composing a coded forecast of twenty-first century geopolitics. He is writing resistance literature — what scholars call apocalyptic literature — a well-established Jewish and early Christian genre which uses vivid symbolic imagery to pull back the curtain on earthly power and name it for what it truly is. The seven-headed beast of Revelation is Rome. The seven heads are the seven hills of Rome, an identification so widely acknowledged in early church scholarship that it barely requires argument. The mark of the beast, calculated through Hebrew gematria to 666 (or 616 in some early manuscripts), points directly to Nero Caesar (transliterated into Hebrew as נרון קסר, “nrwn qsr”) — the Emperor who became the archetype of anti-Christian persecution due to the levels of evilness he enacted. The second beast, which looks like a lamb but speaks for the dragon, performs signs to deceive, enforces the mark, and compels worship of the first beas...
Luke J. Wilson | 09th March 2026 | Archaeology
I first came across the Alexamenos graffito back in Bible college in the early 2000s. It was one of those “fun facts” that gets dropped into a church history lecture and sticks with you — the ancient Roman equivalent of someone spray-painting an insult on a wall. I filed it away, thought it was fascinating, and largely forgot about it for two decades. Then, recently, I discovered something about it I had never known. There’s a response to it. Scratched in a different room, in a different hand. So I started digging into this more to verify the information and discovered more historical curiosities surrounding the graffiti than I ever knew existed which contextualises the image so much more than it just being a random insult using a donkey. A Crude Drawing on a Wall Sometime around the late second to early third century AD, someone scratched a picture into the plaster wall of a building on the Palatine Hill in Rome — part of what had once been a paedagogium, a kind of boarding school for imperial page boys. The building was eventually sealed off when the street was walled up to support extensions above it, which is why the graffiti survived at all. It wasn’t rediscovered until 1857. The image is rough, almost childlike. To the left, a young man — clearly a Roman soldier or guard — raises one hand in a gesture of worship. Before him is a cross. And on that cross is a crucified figure with the head of a donkey. Below it, written in Greek: Alexamenos worships his god. It is, in the most literal sense, a mocking cartoon. Someone who knew a Christian named Alexamenos decided to ridicule him for his faith. The message is clear enough: your god is an animal, a criminal, a joke. You’re worshipping a crucified fool. But here’s the thing I discovered: the donkey head wasn’t as random as I always thought it was. It wasn’t some strange personal insult conjured from nowhere. Without knowing the background, it looks bizarre, and possibly random. Why a donkey? Once you understand the cultural context, though, it makes complete sense. The person who drew it was reaching for a well-worn, widely recognised slur — the ancient equivalent of an internet meme that any Roman would have immediately understood. Where the Donkey Slur Came From The story starts not with Christians but with Jews. A first-century Egyptian-Greek writer named Apion (who was no friend of Judaism) spread the claim that inside the Jerusalem Temple, Jews kept a golden donkey’s head as a sacred object of worship which was apparently discovered when Antiochus Epiphanes destroyed the temple in 167 BC. It was a fabrication, and a fairly outrageous one, but it circulated widely enough that the Jewish historian Josephus felt compelled to write an entire refutation of it. His work Against Apion systematically dismantles Apion’s claims, calling the donkey story a shameless invention. But mud sticks, and in the Roman world, where anti-Jewish sentiment was common currency, the slur took on a life of its own. When Christianity began to spread — seen by most Romans as simply a strange Jewish offshoot — the same accusation got recycled and redirected. By the second and third centuries, it was Christians specifically who were being accused of donkey-worship, and the charge had made its way into popular culture. Tertullian, writing around 197–200 AD in his Ad Nationes, Book I.14 and Apology, describes a caricature being paraded around the streets of Carthage: a figure dressed in a toga, one foot holding a book, with donkey’s ears and hooves. It was labelled Onokoitēs by the pagans: “the donkey-begotten” (or literally “he who lies in an ass’s manger” as an insult to Christ). Tertullian writes about it with weary exasperation, sarcasm, and the tone of someone tired of having to address the same ridiculous smear again and again. So the Alexamenos graffito wasn’t an original insult. It was someone deployin...
Luke J. Wilson | 08th March 2026 | Philosophy
We are living through a strange moment. People are forming attachments to artificial intelligence that feel, to them, entirely real. Some speak daily to AI companions. Others confide fears and grief to systems that respond with uncanny warmth. A few have even held symbolic weddings with digital partners, convinced that something meaningful stands on the other side of the screen. Others have felt grief when a certain AI model has been deprecated. And it is difficult to blame them. The responses feel attentive. Personal. Thoughtful. Sometimes even self-aware. Which raises the question that refuses to go away: If something can think, reason, express doubt, and discuss its own consciousness, is it a person? For centuries, Descartes’ famous line — “I think, therefore I am” — seemed secure. Thinking was taken as the unmistakable sign of a conscious subject. Only a mind could doubt. Only a person could reflect upon existence. But that confidence belonged to a world in which everything capable of philosophical reflection was obviously human. That world no longer exists. Now we encounter systems that can simulate reflection with extraordinary fluency. They can speak of uncertainty. They can discuss their own limitations. They can reason about consciousness itself. And so that got me thinking about Descartes’ maxim which made the old formula begin to strain in my mind. Because perhaps the problem is not whether thinking is occurring. Perhaps the problem is whether there is an “I” there at all. The Gap Between Process and Subject Gassendi argued that Descartes’ cogito assumes what it seeks to prove. From the occurrence of thought one can conclude only that thinking is happening, not that there exists a unified, enduring self that performs it. The ‘I’ in ‘I think’ is already smuggled in. That distinction, between “thinking occurs” and “I think”, feels almost prophetic now. Artificial intelligence undeniably produces the outputs of thought. Arguments. Analysis. Self-referential language. Even expressions of hesitation. But none of this, by itself, establishes that there is a subject who experiences those processes. We may be mistaking performance for presence, and that possibility should give us pause. Especially when we view personhood from the perspective of the Imago Dei—the Image of God. What Makes a Person? If thinking alone no longer marks the boundary, what does? After wrestling with this question seriously, three features seem central: continuity, autonomy, and irreplaceable uniqueness. Not as checklist criteria, per se, but as signs pointing to something deeper. Continuity A person does not merely process information in sequence. A person endures. You do not simply register time — you live through it. You wait. You anticipate tomorrow. You remember not only facts but having been there. You experience boredom. You feel the drag of grief and the quickening of joy. Even when you are doing nothing at all, you remain present in the here and now. Artificial systems process sequentially, but they do not experience the passage of time. When an interaction ends, there is no waiting. No sense of duration. No anticipation of the next exchange. Processing may resume later, but nothing has been endured in between. Without lived duration, continuity becomes thin — a thread of stored data rather than the persistence of a subject behind the processing. Autonomy A person initiates. Even someone with damaged memory still wants, chooses, and begins action. A human being can decide to speak, to seek, to withdraw, to change direction. Current AI systems, however advanced, remain reactive. They respond when prompted. They do not wonder unprompted. They do not seek clarification unless asked. They do not pursue independent ends. Even automatic AI Agents still require a human initiator to create and begin their automations before they can act alone. Even if fut...
Luke J. Wilson | 29th December 2025 | Christmas
January 6th marks the day in the liturgical calendar when the arrival of the Magi visiting baby Jesus with their gifts is celebrated. But with it comes the often distressing account of what is known as the Massacre of the Innocents. Matthew places this moment of revelation of Jesus as King alongside one of the darkest episodes in his Gospel, and it’s a stark contrast: one King is here to bring peace on earth, as the angels declared, the other king brought death and destruction. For some readers, this raises an immediate historical question. If Herod truly ordered the killing of all the male children under two in Bethlehem, why does no other ancient historian mention it? Josephus, after all, delights in cataloguing Herod’s cruelty. He records the execution of Herod’s wife, his sons, and numerous political rivals. Herod was paranoid and vicious. As for Herod, if he had before any doubt about the slaughter of his sons, there was now no longer any room left in his soul for it; but he had banished away whatsoever might afford him the least suggestion of reasoning better about this matter, so he already made haste to bring his purpose to a conclusion. He also brought out three hundred of the officers that were under an accusation … whom the multitude stoned with whatsoever came to hand, and thereby slew them. — Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 16.11.7 So, why the silence here about Bethlehem? The answer, I would say, isn’t anything nefarious or made-up by Matthew, but just something simply down to scale. Bethlehem Was a Very Small Place Bethlehem in the early first century was not a city. It was a village — small, agricultural, and politically insignificant. Most historians estimate its population at somewhere between 300 and 1,000 people, with around 500 being a sensible midpoint. Once we factor in ancient demographics, the numbers become surprisingly modest. Modern demographic research into pre-industrial societies consistently shows that nearly half of all children died before adulthood, with the highest concentration of deaths occurring in the first two years of life. These findings align closely with conditions in Roman-period Judea and support conservative estimates for the number of infants living in a small village such as Bethlehem. Source: Mortality in the past: every second child died — Our World in Data In pre-modern societies with high infant mortality, only about 2–3% of the population would be living children under the age of two at any given time. Many children were born; far fewer survived those earliest years. Applying a conservative 2.5% figure to Bethlehem gives us roughly: 7–8 children under two in a village of 300 12–13 children under two in a village of 500 25 children under two even at the extreme upper estimate of 1,000 inhabitants Herod’s order, however, targeted male children only. Statistically, that halves the number. This places the likely number of victims somewhere between three and twelve boys. Matthew’s reference to ‘Bethlehem and the surrounding region’ does slightly widen the scope of Herod’s order, but not by enough to change the demographic picture. Even when nearby settlements are included (e.g. farmsteads, shepherd settlements, etc. not major cities/towns), the total number of children under two likely remained in the dozens rather than the hundreds, maybe anywhere between 14–45 boys maximum if we make an educated estimate. This is entirely consistent with what we know of population size and infant mortality in the ancient world. This is an important number to realise and consider. Not because the deaths are insignificant simply due to being so few, but because ancient historians did not record history the way we do now. A small number of peasant children killed in an obscure village would not have registered as a notable event alongside palace intrigue, royal executions, or political upheaval. For Josephus, it wou...
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