Here’s a neat post from Ichtus77 on her blog of the same name. She lists 12 facts that are admitted by the majority of New Testament scholars across the broad spectrum of worldviews, including atheistic scholars.

Excerpt:

I am studying “the twelve facts” and want to get down what I’ve got so far. After the facts are displayed, we’re going to turn the whole thing into a logic puzzle.

Here are the 12 Facts:

1. Jesus died by Roman crucifixion.
2. He was buried, most likely in a private tomb.
3. Soon afterwards the disciples were discouraged, bereaved and despondent, having lost hope.
4. Jesus’ tomb was found empty very soon after his interment.
5. The disciples had experiences that they believed were the actual appearances of the risen Christ.
6. Due to these experiences, the disciples lives were thoroughly transformed. They were even willing to die for their belief.
7. The proclamation of the Resurrection took place very early, from the beginning of church history.
8. The disciple’s public testimony and preaching of the Resurrection took place in the city of Jerusalem, where Jesus had been crucified and buried shortly before.
9. The gospel message centered on the preaching of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
10. Sunday was the primary day of worshiping and gathering.
11. James, the brother of Jesus and a skeptic before this time, became a follower of Jesus when he believed he also saw the risen Jesus.
12. Just a few years later, Paul became a believer, due to an experience that he also believed was an appearance of the risen Jesus.

These are the facts that you see admitted in debates by atheistic historians, like in the debate between James Crossley and William Lane Craig.

The resurrection puzzle is like a Sherlock Holmes mystery. People deduce what happened from the evidence that is considered to be unimpeachable. The “minimal facts” that EVERYONE accept in debates. The reason why everyone accepts these facts is because they pass the historical criteria which are used everywhere by everyone to determine what is parts of historical writings are authentic. The historical tests for historical records take into account things like how many sources a asserted fact is in, and how early the sources are, and so on.

So the approach is like this:

1) Use historical tests to get undeniable historical facts
2) Try to explain the undeniable historical facts with a hypothesis

Like Sherlock Holmes says: “…when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

It’s the Sherlock Holmes method of doing history.

So, Ichtus77 lists the minimal facts, and in the rest of the post she surveys the following naturalistic hypotheses to see how well they can account for the minimal facts listed above.

Here are the naturalistic theories:

• The Unknown Tomb theory
• The Wrong Tomb theory
• The Twin theory
• The Hallucination theory
• The Existential Resurrection and the Spiritual Resurrection theories
• The Disciples Stole Body theory
• The Authorities Hid Body theory
• The Swoon theory
• The Passover Plot theory

The main way that scholars argue for the resurrection is to list the minimal facts, and defend them on historical grounds, then show that there is no naturalistic hypothesis that explains them all. The resurrection hypothesis explains all the data.