Truer than Death

“A pugnacious little paper in Fleet Street made a remark which has always hovered in my memory…The writer said that any man who believes in the Resurrection is bound to believe also in the story of Aladdin in the “Arabian Nights”.
….But the comparison between the Gospel miracle, and the Arabian fairytale is about the most unfortunate comparison in the world. For in the one case there is a plain and particular reason for thinking the thing true, or at least meant to be true. And in the other case there is a plain and particular reason for realizing that the tale is not only untrue, but is not even meant to be true. The historical case for the Resurrection is that everybody else, except the Apostles, had every possible motive to declare what they had done with the body, if anything had been done with it. The Apostles might have hidden it in order to announce a sham miracle, but it is very difficult to imagine men being tortured and killed for the truth of a miracle which they knew to be a sham. In the case of the Apostles’ testimony, the general circumstances suggest that it is true. In the case of the Arabian tale, the general circumstances avow and proclaim that it is false. For we are told in the book itself that all the stories are told by a woman merely to amuse the king, and distract his attention from the idea of cutting off her head…In the one case, then, we have witnesses who not only think the thing true, but do veritably think it is true as death, or truer than death. They therefore preferred death to the denial of its truth. And in the other case we have a story-teller who, in trying to avoid death, has every motive to tell lies.”

— GK Chesterton, Illustrated News, September 29,1934