The Resurrection of Jesus: Alternative Theories, part 2: Major Arguments

 The Hallucination Theory: That everyone who thought they saw Jesus actually just hallucinated can be theorized different ways. (The proposed events are often called "visions," by people like Ehrman and Ludemann, because they apparently want to be nice about it.) But the most annoying argument for this is when critics attempt to draw parallels between the evidence for the resurrection and other religions, with the indication that they cancel each other out.

I said in the introduction post that Ehrman's bit on the resurrection was the most skeptical and potent argument I have ever dealt with. This isn't saying much, considering I don't even have an associates degree and read on my own time everything I know, but of course it's good that to consider powerful things unbelievers can claim.

He talks about when hordes of Catholics claimed to have seen the virgin Mary. And multiple people reported having seen her at the same time. At one time, "Among the observers were doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, engineers, and lawyers." (1) A Jesuit priest interviewed 490 people who claimed to have seen Mary herself, and this convinced him that what they were saying was true. Mary was reported by "not just people whom we might 'write off' as being particularly gullible--but people whom we might think should 'know better.'"

Phillip H. Wiebe wrote a book called Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New Testament to Today (1997). He has 28 case-studies, and they aren't just individual encounters. Ehrman points out a case of special interest. This is reports of sightings of Jesus, which claim to sometimes be obviously supernatural because, for example, one time he walked through a pulpit, not around it. This came from Pentacostal Holiness Church in Oakland, California, in the 1950s.

"Skeptics may point out that the time between when these events allegedly happened in the 1950s and Wiebe's written account of them amounts to several decades, so one may be justified in suspecting the accuracy of the witnesses' memories. But Wiebe points out that about the same amount of time fell between the life of Jesus and the accounts of the earliest Gospels." (2)

(Now I must inevitably say that some of all the instances given I would believe are actual genuine encounters. This one here might be, for all I know, made up by someone to try to sway the audience, but another example when someone who practiced Judaism converted because Christ told him to "follow me" obviously is forced to fit in my theology. God is all-knowing. There is no way that could happen without Him knowing it. So even if the persons mind would have invented it alone, Christ knew this would convince him and so, by way of an actual appearance, converted him.)

I do not wish to present what could look like a strawman argument from Ehrman's other examples of religious visions. I'm not going to exhaust every detail he mentions but will try to include the most striking things. For example, he includes that walls of the church were checked by a skeptic, and he couldn't explain the images that had appeared on them "(no hidden windows or the like)": "hands, hearts, and crosses," "with liquid like oil flowing from them" and giving off a fragrance. There are photographs of stuff in the church, along with a film, which was lost but Wiebe did see it at one point. As for Mary, she didn't only appear to Catholics: some Muslims saw her too, and she also was photographed sometime. 

As I said way back in the introduction post, explaining these are not my strong suit. Actually, I can't really do it at all. I don't know anything about this stuff, except what Ehrman shared.

So here I wish to explain why I'm not all that jumpy to believe Ehrman when he said things like Muslims saw Mary. Ehrman dedicated a handful of pages of his argument on the resurrection on the implausibility that Jesus would be buried at all. Furthermore, he presented a "Christian argument" which misinterprets something. But actual Christian apologists responded with things like other good examples, both from Josephus and Philo (Philo whom Ehrman cited), and that archeology has dug up buried crucifixion victims.

I mean, I've constantly been arguing against Ehrman when he says something that supports his skeptical side. Ehrman thinks that it cannot be said whether or not James had a vision of Jesus -- he "possibly did" but it is hard to tell -- and doesn't indicate at all anything like what Ludemann and other skeptical scholars think. As a matter of fact, there is no reference to Habermas's work at all! He does so with Michael Licona and N.T. Wright (to his credit), but what about the fact that Habermas can present strong reasons to believe that Ehrman is wrong, and "the minimal facts approach" actually has a list of critically accepted (and proven) "minimal facts"? 

So you can understand why I'm not wild when Ehrman also presents only his side on the visions of Mary and Jesus, to the original followers or in a twentieth century church. One thing I can do, though, is argue against the apparent parallels he draws between the start of Christianity and things that have been reported to happen in millenniums later Christian sects. 

So please, please, especially if you are a Christian, don't be phased by his presentation! I really don't know! I don't have the other side! If I had the Christian response which has a title starting with How God Became Jesus I should get a fair assessment, not just what fits Ehrman's purposes. I can't disprove these things (in and of themselves, at least) or prove them. 

(Also please don't be offended if your Catholic. I can imagine some explanations for Marian visions, but don't even know much at all about them. I basically have no idea what's up with phenomena like that.).

It is with respect to the resurrection that I can get tough.

"Do such miracles happen? Believers say yes, unbelievers say no. But it is striking and worth noting that typically believers in one religious tradition often insist on the 'evidence' for the miracles that support their views and completely discount the 'evidence' for miracles attested in some other religious tradition, even though, at the end of the day, it is the same kind of evidence (for example, eyewitness testimony) and may be of greater abundance. Protestant apologists interested in 'proving' that Jesus was raised from the dead rarely show any interest in applying their finely honed historical talents to the exalted Blessed Virgin Mary." (3)

I must pause and say I appreciate that Ehrman complimented people against his side by saying they have "finely honed historical talents." 

The Disciples

"But for people who are not suffering from mental disease and are not ingesting LSD, visions appear to occur with particular frequency among those who are experiencing bereavement or religious awe and expectation. ...

"Certain typical aspects of these visions are of some relevance for understanding the disciples' visions of Jesus--who was, after all, a beloved one who had died suddenly and tragically and was deeply mourned and grieved." (4)

"According to our early records, the disciples had plenty of reasons for feeling guilt and shame over how they had failed Jesus both during his life and at his greatest time of need." (5)

Is Ehrman right? Is a grieving hallucinatory experience a reasonable explanation for the Disciples? 

Michael Goulder also proposed basically the same thing Ehrman did: first Peter hallucinated Jesus, and then the other Disciples fell in step. They were deluded. 

"Peter had committed himself more deeply than any others, and he had let Jesus down more shamefully than any others. ... In such a situation it is not difficult to see the strength of the emotional forces for a reorientation." (6)

However, William Lane Craig had a rather (intellectually) harsh response: 

"Moreover, Goulder's imaginative reconstruction of Peter's emotional state following his denials and Jesus' crucifixion fails to diagnose correctly the true problem Peter faced. It was not so much that he had failed his Lord as that his Lord had failed him! Goulder fails to enter into the mindset of a first-century Jew who had been following a failed messianic pretender. Any mockery and contempt he would face would be not for his failure to go to his death with Jesus--after all, everyone else deserted him too--but rather for his having followed the false prophet from Nazareth in the first place. Some Messiah he turned out to be! Some kingdom he inaugurated! The first sensible thing Peter had done since leaving his wife and family to follow Jesus was to disown this pretender. As Grass has emphasized in his trenchant critique of the subjective vision hypothesis, one of the greatest weaknesses of that theory is that it cannot really take seriously what a catastrophe the crucifixion was for the disciples' faith in Jesus. Ignoring the disaster of the cross, Goulder imagines without a shred of evidence a self-preoccupied Peter wrestling with his own guilt and shame rather than struggling  with dashed messianic expectations. Lest anyone say that such shattered expectations led to Peter's hallucinating Jesus alive from the dead, let me simply repeat that no such hope existed in Israel... with respect to the Messiah[.]" (7)

I am blessed to actually have an example of Jews reactions to an actual failed Messiah, appropriately from Lapide. "The disappointed called him 'Bar Kosiba' --the son of the lie-- in the bitterness of their defeat." (8)

It still is inevitable to take into account arguments for hallucinations plausibly happening to people. The number of people who have had at least a vivid hallucination might surprise you. 

Ehrman cites three different credible surveys about hallucinations(9). One took place at the end of the nineteenth century by a man named H. A. Sidgewick who interviewed 7,559 women and 7,717 men, with the results of 7.8 percent of men reporting having had at least one vivid hallucination experience, and 12 percent of the women. In 1968, P. McKeller conducted a highly credible survey ("using modern methods of analysis accepted today in the social sciences"), where 1 of 4 people said they had had at least a single hallucination. 15 years after that T.B. Posey and M.E. Losch researched auditory hallucinations, and an entire 39 percent of 375 college students matched. Finally, in 1991, what Ehrman considers the "most comprehensive study of the general population" was taken by A. Y. Tien. 13 percent of people reported having had at least one hallucination which was vivid. This result was very close to Sidgewick's conclusion, which wasn't so scientifically credible.

Ehrman asks about the reasonable explanation for "these large numbers," and cites one from Bentall. However, I would like to point out that there is a "glass half-empty" side which is also reasonable. Only McKeller's survey had one-fourth of people hallucinating. The others aren't even one-fifth. 

Bentall's explanation is as follows:

"[Source monitoring is] the skill of monitoring where the source of a sensation comes from, either inside or outside the mind. Bentall argues that source monitoring judgements are affected by the culture in which a person grows up. If a person's culture subscribes to the existence of ghosts or the reality of dead people appearing, the chance that what one 'sees' will be assumed to be a ghost or a dead person is obviously heightened. Moreover, and this is a key point, stress and emotional arousal can have serious effects on a person's source monitoring skills. Someone who is under considerable stress, or experiencing deep grief, trauma, or personal anguish, is more likely to experience a failure of source monitoring." (10)

Ehrman himself here is acknowledging how culture -- one's personal beliefs -- effects how they will interpret visions. But the Disciples thought that Jesus was a false messiah! They ran away because he was going to be crucified! He didn't stop the people, even when Peter chopped of the ear of the servant of the high priest! I mean, a few paragraphs above I cited Craig, who wonderfully explained this. The crucifixion of Jesus shattering Jewish faith is a "key point" for me. Indeed, I thought of many questions about such non-Christian arguments while I was writing other posts. Why explain the catastrophe and implications of the cross in one place, and then turn around and forget it elsewhere? 

Furthermore, Habermas once responded to atheist Antony Flew, who was using an idea from Jack Kent, who wrote The Psychological Origins of the Resurrection Myth. "Grief hallucinations" definitely do happen. But someone who experiences that is usually alone, like an elderly person whose spouse passed away(11). Ehrman mentions the people who are suffering loss can "seek to form community with others who remember the loved one[.]" (12)  But the Disciples community was one of justified denial. If one person started to think Jesus was raised, others would surely talk them out of it, like asking, "Do we want to risk our lives when he's only appearing to Peter?" They wouldn't be led into a group hallucination (delusion). Habermas included: "Additionally, hallucinations rarely cause lifelong transformations. People frequently get talked out of them." (11) (Coincidentally, Ehrman said it was "not infrequently" that grieving people formed communities.) 

I mean, all those surveys up there, what do they imply? That people who reported having hallucinations were reporting having hallucinations! Definitely some might believe in them (like religious people), but surely others were able to eventually shrug it off. 

Now I must say I think I felt embarrassed when I first came across Luke 24:33-34: "...the Eleven [said] 'It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon." After all, I believe the Bible is the word of God, and this belief is arguably indicated by the resurrection itself. So it seems like this is a rebuttal from God to my argument! 

However, I readily admit that just because something happened does not mean it is likely. I mean, this entire argument uses multiple different events to prove the resurrection, and in the end doesn't just rest on the Disciples! Arguably, this verse can be verified independently to have happened. Why? Because it appears so arbitrary. Two lesser known Disciples go to tell them about Jesus, and the Eleven are there already saying He is risen. But right after that, they doubt. This looks unembellished and like it only makes sense if that verse did happen, because it is a historical kernel in an otherwise (perhaps) legendary account. 

Actually, the quickest answer I can give (if you wish to skip the immediate five paragraphs below) which is still potent is that also in Luke, they thought they saw a ghost right after proclaiming Peter had seen Jesus. (I don't find this improbable. I have argued for why it could be elsewhere[13], and ironically, actually the fact that culture can cut down on one's ability to source monitor only reasonable makes sense here.) Habermas once mentioned the Disciples rethinking their decisions and possibly "recant[ing] or just quietly fall[ing] away[.]" (14) Just because the Disciples suddenly believed then doesn't mean it would stick around. Remember, hallucinations are not all that common at all. They aren't required to people who had even experienced bereavement. After a while of talking about how amazing this is, someone could suddenly pause, and ask, "But waittttttt.... where is He?" And then they argue that Peter (and maybe another Disciple or two after Peter) really had hallucinated.

I mean, imagine if someone attended a school which was obscenely secular. All the Christians would be segregated every day for a time in the gym, with the only Christian teacher. Then one day, she gets fired, and all the students watch her drive off, and even attend her leaving for another state. A couple of days or so after that, one student, who was known for his passion and enthusiasm, runs in and says "I have seen her! She's coming back here!" 

Now the students know (or think they know) that she was gone, and the school wouldn't let her have her job back anyway. Do you think they would feel compelled to risk their lives because of what just he said? (I told you this school was obscenely secular.) Or would they instead try to persuade him that he just mistook another teacher for her, or if he had seen the person up close, that he had hallucinated? 

With that in mind, consider that the Disciples predicament of a crucified leader was much worse.

I found Ehrman's comments on this verse interesting. He says it (emphasis original) "may coincidence"  with the early creed, but we can't tell if Luke is claiming Cleopas and the other Disciple saw Him first(15). We will get to others witnessing Jesus before the order of events in the creed happened next post, but suffice it to say that this is completely undemonstrably an error because the creed doesn't say the very first person Jesus appeared to out of everybody in the world at every time was Peter. This of course is related to 1 Corintihans 15:5 because Luke 24:34 is too similar to have not been contrived from the creed, and if it is original there still could be contradiction in the order of appearances, but that's just in the secondary details. Unless someone shows a priori that if any miraculous inspiration at all exists in the Bible, then it all must be harmonizable, historical criticism can triumph and say "at least this amount is true." 

Finally, in my post where I said I would get back to this verse (from fact #1), I pointed out how there is so much more evidence outweighing the apparent indication. Part of the proof of the Disciples falling away is it fits contextual credibility. There's a lot of evidence why critical Bible scholars know it's true. But wouldn't it look silly if they had to try to debunk the Bible by using what they would think most probably didn't happen? What I mean is something I alluded to all the way back at the beginning of the introduction. Ehrman's christ -- a skeptical depiction of Christ -- is not someone who claimed to be the Son of Man and predicted that they would rise from the dead. Instead he was just someone playing a vital part in ushering in the kingdom where the actual Son of Man will reign. (For example, in Matthew 19:28 Jesus said that those "who have been my Disciples" will sit on "twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Does that include Judas? Ehrman thinks this is embarrassing testimony because it includes Judas. I don't believe it is a contradiction and am not sure what it means, although I think it is probable that Judas actually will be there along with the rest. At any rate I highly agree with Ehrman -- this looks like a contradiction and doesn't agree with early Christian contempt for Judas.) 

But we have to look at the Bibilical depiction of the Disciples reaction -- at least in arguable legend, which Luke 24:34 is -- in light of what else the Bible says about Him. I would argue that Jesus did call Himself the Son of Man. In Mark 9:31-32 none of the Disciples could understand Him. You can see my post on explaining the Trinity more thoroughly here(16), but "Son of Man" was a reference to Daniel 7:13-14, where Daniel sees a figure who will be worshipped and rule over the world. Judaism demands that there be ONLY ONE GOD and you WORSHIP AND SERVE HIM ONLY. So Jesus would have to had to understand Himself as Divine. "Liar, lunatic, legend, lord." This query originated with C.S. Lewis, and basically what it says is Jesus either did or didn't claim to be God. If He did, He was either crazy, lying, or He was (and is) God.

Ehrman argues Christians had brand-new interpretations of scripture to be Messianic, for instance how Isaiah 53 and Pslams 22 refer to Jesus (this just goes back to no one expecting a crucified Savior). What room, then, for Jesus to prophecy His resurrection? Had the skeptical Jesus really had radical new ideas and prophesied His resurrection, He would have to have been God, and this just proves Christianity. For he obviously wasn't lying. Consider when he road in to Jerusalem, where his enemies were, on a donkey to fulfill scripture. Would a liar do that because, say, he was eager to get tortured to death? And I doubt a person on a level with those who think they are a poached egg would be so sophisticated in gaining a following and studying the Old Testament. (Other religious cultures can mix the idea of humanity and the Divine, I know. But in Judaism that would be the most utterly crazy and blasphemous thing.)

See, I don't really believe that the Disciples were just completely out of faith in Jesus, regarding everything considerable. Why? Jesus wasn't like the other messiahs. He had stuck it in His followers' heads that He was going to die and rise again. They had trouble understanding it, but something was still there. So there experience wasn't straightforward. They had turmoil. For instance, Peter ran to the tomb along with the other Disciple (John 20:2-8). (Even then, though, only one Disciple believed. It wasn't Peter.)

Another objection Bart Ehrman included was in reference to the Gospels, although it has been used by Antony Flew and Michael Martin. Michael Martin is an atheist philosopher from fact #6 who argued that Paul didn't know if Jesus had been crucified in the first-century. In case no one remembered to try to determine the answer for themselves, he did have first-hand interaction with Peter (His close Disciple) and James, whom he even explicitly calls in Galatians 1:19, "the Lord's brother." 

The challenge was that like the book recording the events at the Christian church in 1950, the miraculous appearances are recorded decades later. Martin also says that people don't really know where Paul got his information, there is no reason to think any of the witnesses are trustworthy, and there is no other testimony that confirms the data(17). 

Well, we've already seen that James, Paul, and the Disciples would very well know that they would face persecution and possible death, as the crucifixion itself indicated, and even if Paul received the creed of appearances to them all not in A.D. 30, he still visited James and Peter for an intense investigation of the Gospel. He would know what was true or not. Furthermore, even granting that people today don't have any other corroboration, it is not necessary. The claims was being made in the time of eyewitnesses, when they would be around and could correct the ones about them. Back in the first-century there definitely was corroboration.

Paul's investigation of the Gospel roughly sometime around AD 35 is much closer to the events then, say AD 70, when Mark is said (by critical scholars at least) to have been written. And then, Flew himself pointed out that people would have to have visions first before, say, embellishment slipped into the accounts(18). Elsewhere in the same debate he pointed out that "there may be different degrees of vividness and thus different degrees of conviction in the person as to whether they were seeing something." (19) When I put those two together, it reminded me of something J. Warner Wallace, former atheist and cold-case homicide detective turned Christian, said: "When witnesses experience something that's unique, unrepeated, and personally important or powerful, they're much more likely to remember it. Of course, many of the disciples' experiences with Jesus met those criteria." (20) So not all reports about the Disciples' resurrection of Jesus experience(s) could be false. What still has to be explained is how they could have a vision powerful enough to convince them to die for Jesus (so, complete conviction). Of course they would remember when Jesus had appeared to them risen from the dead! It transformed their lives!

See, I'm not going to argue over the nature of the appearances. There was debate between skeptics who claim the earliest reports from Paul prove them to be a vision like Paul had, and then Christians who say that it is evident there was a physical body and Paul adding himself to the list just proves his experience is important, not necessarily of the same nature. Habermas himself pointed out that even some scholars who interpret the post-grave appearances of Jesus as visionary in nature would still believe He really had, because "there are no plausible naturalistic theories[.]" (21) Seriously, I have trouble believing that just three unbelievers who had very different relations to Jesus, James and Peter and Paul, would all have the same powerful hallucination!

"If the alleged witnesses are shown to be gullible, mendacious, or superstitious, or if their claims are ambiguous, or if the circumstances under which their observations occurred were not conducive to accurate observation (for instance, the alleged witnesses were under extreme emotional duress), the credibility of the claim will greatly suffer." (22) This was explained by atheist Keith Parsons. While he just went on to question the physical resurrection, I think he was trying to discredit the Disciples with that part about emotional stress. But this is all a stereotype which obviously fails to address the actual data we have on the Disciples.

Citations:

1. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 198-99.

2. Ibid., 200-01.

3. Ibid., 199.

4. Ibid., 194-95.

5. Ibid., 197.

6. Paul Copan and Ronald K. Tacelli, Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Ludemann (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL. 2000), 93.

7. Ibid., 194. Craig cited Hans Grass, Ostergeschehen und Osterberichte, 4th ed. (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), p. 233-43.

8. Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Augsburg Fortress Publishing House, 1982), 134.

9. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 193-94.

10. Ibid., 194. He cites Richard P. Bentall, "Hallucinatory Experiences," in Etzel Cardena, Steven J. Lynn, and Stanley Krippner, eds., Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2000), 86.

11. Gary R. Habermas and Antony Flew, Resurrected? An Atheist and Theist in Dialogue, John F. Ankerberg edition (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, inc: 2005), 8.

12. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 195.

13. See the last paragraph of Harmonizing the empty tomb accounts.

14. Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 2016), 261.

15. Bart Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend (Oxford University Press: Oxford, NY. 2006), 53, emphasis his.

16. https://onechristianthought.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-true-lost-gospel-of-peter-updated_5.html

17. Michael Martin, The Case Against Christianity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991). Cited in Gary R. Habermas and J.P. Moreland, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality (Wipf and Stock: Eugene, OR. 1998), 142.

18. Gary Habermas and Antony G. N. Flew, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, edited by Terry L. Miethe (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), 37.

19. Ibid., 79.

20. Lee Strobel, The Case for Miracles: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Supernatural (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 2018), 197.

21. Habermas and Flew, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?, 62. 

22. J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist? The Debate Between Theists and Atheists (Prometheus Books: 1993), 190.