Why His Death Had to Be Public

But suppose that, without any disease and without any pain, he had hidden his body away privately and by himself, “in a corner,” or in a desert place, or in a house, or anywhere at all, and afterward had suddenly appeared and said that he had been raised from the dead. Everyone would have thought he was telling idle tales, and what he said about the resurrection would have been all the more disbelieved, since there would have been no one at all to bear witness to his death. Death must come before resurrection, since there would be no resurrection unless death came first. So if the death of his body had taken place somewhere in secret, with the death not seen and not happening before witnesses, his resurrection too would have been hidden and without evidence. [a]

Or why, when he proclaimed the resurrection once he had risen, should he have had his death take place in secret? Or why, when he drove out evil spirits in the presence of all, made the man blind from his birth see again, and changed the water into wine, so that by these things he might be believed to be the Word of God, should he not show his mortal nature to be incorruptible in the presence of all, so that he himself might be believed to be the Life? Or how could his disciples speak boldly about the resurrection if they could not say that he had died first? Or how could they be believed when they said that death had happened first and then the resurrection, unless the very people before whom they spoke boldly had been witnesses of his death? For if, even as it was, when his death and resurrection had taken place in the sight of all, the Pharisees of that day would not believe, but even forced those who had seen the resurrection to deny it, then surely, if these things had happened in secret, how many excuses for unbelief would they have invented? Or how could the end of death, and the victory over it, be proved, unless he had challenged death before the eyes of all and shown it to be dead, made powerless from then on by the incorruption of his body?