Life & Mortality Quote by Josh McDowell

McDowell’s line is an apologetics mic drop dressed as a geography lesson. It doesn’t try to “prove” the resurrection by adding new evidence; it reframes plausibility. If Christianity began as a con, he argues, its founders picked the single worst market for a lie: the city where the execution happened, where authorities could produce a body, where eyewitnesses and enemies were clustered, where the story could be strangled in its crib. “In Jerusalem” lands like a punchline because it turns the skeptic’s premise against itself: a fabricated miracle should die fastest at the point of origin.

The subtext is strategic. McDowell is writing to readers who suspect early Christians of mythmaking or propaganda. By emphasizing “connived a scheme,” he invites the cynical read, then treats it as self-defeating. This is less courtroom logic than rhetorical pressure: if the claim survived in hostile territory, maybe it wasn’t merely social contagion.

Context matters: modern evangelical apologetics often treats the resurrection as a historical claim that can be argued like a case file. McDowell’s broader project leans on that “minimal facts” vibe, appealing to common sense over theology. The line also subtly flatters the audience’s rationality: you’re not being asked to suspend disbelief, just to notice that scams usually start where verification is hardest, not easiest.

It’s persuasive because it narrows the debate to a single, vivid scenario, even as it glides past alternative explanations (fear, rumor, visionary experiences) that don’t require a literal body-in-a-tomb showdown.