As Christians prepare to celebrate Easter is it a coincidence that more sensationalist claims about Jesus have hit the media? Last year the rave was all about cracking secret codes. More recently we have heard about lost tombs found and bone fragments of Jesus, which if true would cast doubt on the core message of Christianity.

To doubt the resurrection of Jesus is nothing new. There was plenty of doubt to go around among Jesus's own disciples. When the women followers of Jesus brought the good news to the frightened and hiding disciples they took the news as “leros”—an idle tale (Luke 24:11). Later, after the disciples themselves had seen the risen Christ, they announced the news to Thomas who retorted: “unless I see the print of the nails . . . I will not believe” (John 20:25)! Whether in the first century or the twenty-first, the magnitude of the resurrection boggles the mind. The critical question is this: are we dealing with honest doubts seeking to understand the mystery, or are we dealing with pernicious doubts looking to undermine it?

The most objectionable aspect of the recent so-called documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” (and a book is to follow) was its superficial and titillating approach. On flimsy evidence the creators came up with unabashed spectacular claims. They manipulated and squeezed every hint of possibility to lead the unwary to the conclusion with which the filmmakers had started—that they had discovered the true tomb of Jesus and fragments of His bones from which they had DNA extracted! And all to put before the public "for discussion."

Professional archaeologists have debunked the claims. Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine and catalog the first-century tomb found at Talpiot in 1980 some four miles south of Jerusalem, declared that the filmmakers "had no credibility whatever” but thought that their claims “make for profitable television.” Other archaeologists called the venture "fantasy archaeology."

What are the main reasons that latest sensationalist news has now faded in the media? First, it is ludicrous to treat a subject very serious and dear to billions with an Indiana-Jones approach. Second, the names on the discovered ossuaries were common Jewish names and in no credible way indicated that the family tomb of Jesus had been found. Third, the inscriptions of several names could be read in other ways that entirely collapse the film’s conclusion. Fourth, the ossuary allegedly belonging to Mary Magdalene cannot be vouched for on the basis of a fourth-century apocryphal book (The Acts of Philip). Fifth, the family of Jesus was poor and from Nazareth in Galilee; they could not be expected to have owned such a grand tomb as found at Talpiot located miles south of Jerusalem. And sixth, the ossuary allegedly belonging to “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” was declared a hoax in 2003 by the Israeli archaeological authorities—the ossuary being of the first century indeed but its inscription scratched on in the twenty first century!

The documentary rehashed the old charge that Jesus's followers stole His body (Matthew 27:64) and buried it in another grave now found. Such a charge would turn the disciples into outright liars and cynical deceivers of friends and compatriots. Resurrection for the Jews in the first century meant resurrection of the whole person—no bones left behind. But think about it. How could a few fishermen perpetrate such a colossal hoax duping both friends and enemies of Jesus? Did they wholly deceive St. Paul, too, the fanatical persecutor of Christianity who later became the greatest preacher of the resurrection? Further, what did such Christian leaders as Peter, James the Brother of the Lord, and Paul have to gain except expulsion from their own religious community, extreme hardships, persecution, and eventual martyrdom? Where did they get the courage to preach a risen Christ at the risk of their very lives? The answer can only be that Christ truly rose from the dead. The apostles beheld the risen Lord, they knew of the empty tomb, and their lives were transformed by the saving power the resurrection of Jesus signified in the religious context of first-century Judaism.

The significance of Jesus’s resurrection goes far beyond the stupendous bare fact. Every reasonable contemporary of Jesus would have regarded a rising from the dead a virtual impossibility, a unique and unprecedented event that, if true, could only have marked a radical new beginning in history. Most Jews long awaited God's great time of deliverance from the forces of evil and their instruments in the world, an act of God that for many included the resurrection of the dead. That exactly was the view of the early Christians who experienced Jesus's resurrection as a unique and decisive act of God in history, the "first fruits" of a radically new age of salvation.

However, for the early Christians, God's deliverance was not from the hands of the Romans as many expected, but from the corruptive bondage to the evil powers—sin, Satan, and death. In other words, Jesus's resurrection marked the decisive start of what St. Paul called the "new creation," a new and transforming wave of grace rushing forward and destined in God’s good time to set free the whole creation “from the bondage of decay" (Romans 8:21). The meaning of Jesus's resurrection is missed apart from this explosive power of the new order of life launched in human history by the ministry of Jesus crowned with His resurrection.

As we come to celebrate Holy Pascha, we ought to know that as Christians we too participate in this mighty wave of the luminous renewal movement begun by Christ the fire-starter. In the first century Jesus's rising from the dead shook the cosmos and put it on a new track in history. It also demonstrated God's seal of vindication of the truth of the saving work of Jesus: where His enemies said "No" and rejected Him, God thundered a "Yes" and established the new era of salvation. The resurrection transformed and empowered the disciples to accomplish against all odds a spiritual triumph unknown in history. However, for those who commit their hearts and lives to Christ, the power of the resurrection is still at work today waiting to be tapped to its fullest. The risen Christ lives and rules forever (Hebrews 13:8). The final evidence is in our own transformed lives, and a vibrant life of the Church in the world, as we share the paschal greetings “Christ is risen!” and “Truly He is risen!”