I. Presuppositions
When assessing the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, the matter of presuppositions is of fundamental importance. If someone believes that miracles are in principle impossible, no amount of evidence will convince them that Jesus rose from the dead, since they have ruled out this possibility a priori. If someone believes that miracles might theoretically be possible, but is not convinced that they ever do actually occur, they will be significantly prejudiced against the possibility that a miraculous event has happened in this case. The vast majority of scholars arguing against the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection seem to fall into one of these two camps.
The fact of the matter is, the philosophical arguments against the possibility of miracles occurring are incredibly weak, and any reasonable person must be open to the possibility that miracles could occur. Furthermore, there is very strong evidence that miraculous events do in fact occur. There are many reliable eyewitness accounts of miracles occurring in the modern period, including not a few miraculous healings with full medical documentation proving these claims. Multiple peer-reviewed scientific studies have shown that Christian prayer can have measurable healing effects. So, not only are miracles possible, but they do in fact occur, often in a context in which the name of Jesus is invoked. This fact should leave us quite open to the possibility that Jesus miraculously rose from the dead, as early Christians claimed. The assumption of many scholars that we must always favor a naturalistic hypothesis, no matter how implausible, over a supernatural hypothesis, is completely unwarranted.
Sources:
Earman, John. Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument against Miracles. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for Miracles. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018.
Metaxas, Eric. Miracles: What they Are, Why they Happen, and How they Can Change your Life. New York, NY: 2014.
Keener, Craig S. Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011.
II. Circumstantial Evidence
Looking at early Christianity, we see a number of remarkable facts. First, all early Christians believed in a future bodily resurrection, even though the Judaism out of which Christianity emerged had a diversity of beliefs about the afterlife, and no pagans at all believed in bodily resurrection. At the same time, early Christians held to several quite new modifications of the Jewish belief in bodily resurrection. They believed it had happened to one person (Jesus) in advance of everyone else. They believed it involved the transformation of our physical body (in contrast to the previous two Jewish options of resurrected bodies being the same as our bodies are now, or shining with heavenly glory (Dan 12)). They believed the Messiah was raised from the dead, which no Jews previously thought would happen. They connected belief in the resurrection to things such as baptism and holiness. They believed that God’s people contribute to it in the present. And they brought this belief to the center of everything, instead of it being a peripheral doctrine. They conclusion we must reach from all of this is that some definite event occurred, way back early on to cause all this; it was not a later made up idea. The earliest Christians really believed that Jesus rose bodily from the grave.
Sources:
Wright, N.T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003.
III. Historical Sources
Our best sources for Jesus’ resurrection are the apostle Paul, writing twenty or so years after the events, and various oral formulas preserved in New Testament texts that scholars have identified as being early traditions predating the NT itself. Particularly significant is I Corinthians 15: 3-8: “For what I received I pass on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time (most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep). Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” There is a very strong consensus among scholars that Paul is recording here an early Christian creed. The terms “pass on” and “received” indicate this. Additionally, its content is stylized with parallelisms and a fourfold oti, it uses non-Pauline terms, and uses the Aramaic “Cephas” rather than the Greek “Peter.” It is likely that Paul received this creed when he visited the Jerusalem apostles 34-37 AD, three years after his conversion (Gal 1:18-19). In addition, we have the resurrection narratives in the gospels, and references to Jesus’ resurrection in some early apostolic fathers such as Clement of Rome and Polycarp, who possibly knew the apostles personally.
Most scholars believe the canonical gospels were written thirty (Mark) to seventy (John) years after Jesus’ death, and that they were not written by eyewitnesses. However, even if this is true, there is good reason to believe that the resurrection narratives in the gospels do preserve early eyewitness testimony. First, there is the remarkable fact that none of the four gospels attempt to describe Jesus’ resurrection itself. This is remarkable because Jesus’ resurrection was the central and foundational belief of the early Christians. The only reason why they would refrain from describing such a central and foundational event is that they were restricting themselves to recording what the eyewitnesses saw with minimal embellishment, rather than making up stories about Jesus’ resurrection. Second, all four gospels agree that women were the first eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. This is remarkable because women were not accepted as credible witnesses in first century Jewish or pagan law courts. Thus, the gospel writers never would have made up these stories which contain this rather embarrassing fact; they would at least have glossed over the fact that women were the first witnesses, unless they were committed to recording what actually happened according to early eyewitness reports. Third, there is an almost no echo or allusion to the Old Testament in these narratives, in contrast to the other parts of the gospels. Thus, it seems that these resurrection narratives, rather than being a product of theological development, go back behind it to the earliest eyewitnesses. Fourth, there is nothing in these stories about the Christian believer’s afterlife. This is in contrast to Paul, Hebrews, Revelation, and the church fathers, all of whom make this connection when they talk about Jesus’ resurrection. These stories precede this theological reflection. Finally, Jesus’ appearance as depicted in these stories does not line up with what we would expect if a first century Jew were making up a story about a resurrected person. His appearance does not shine like a star, as the resurrected are said to do in Daniel 12 (a text which Jesus quotes in Matt 13). Nor is his body just exactly the same as before he died. Rather, Jesus’s resurrected body is depicted in a new way which did not exist previously in Jewish thought. All of these reasons together can make us confident that these stories are from a time prior to the apostle Paul, when the earliest Christians were trying to make sense of the unexpected, extraordinary event of Jesus’ resurrection.
Another point to make is that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John’s accounts are all quite different. This indicates that, whatever the literary relationship between the four gospels was, their resurrection narratives are independent sources, not copied from one source. Some scholars argue that Luke and John made up details like Jesus being touched and eating (details not found in Mark and Matthew) in order to emphasize the physicality of Jesus’ resurrection against late first century docetics who denied Jesus’ physical body. The problem with this is that Luke and John’s narratives also contain Jesus going through locked doors, sometimes not being recognized, appearing and disappearing, and ascending into heaven (details also not found in Mark and Matthew), which they could have left out if they were making up anti-docetic narratives, rather than recording eyewitness testimony that had been handed to them. We can be confident that the gospels preserve independent, early eyewitness accounts.
Skeptics argue that the historical sources we have regarding Jesus’ resurrection are inadequate, since legends can grow up quickly, there is a historical gap between the historical Jesus and these texts, the sources include theological propaganda, and there are some discrepancies in the gospels’ resurrection accounts. In response: yes, legends can grow up quickly, but even skeptical scholars acknowledge that we can still get some reliable information from the sources we have that can qualify as historical fact. Compared to the historical sources we have for other historical events in the ancient world which all scholars acknowledge as historical, the sources we have regarding Jesus’ resurrection are actually quite early and numerous. All writings contain bias and propaganda, but we still regard them as containing much that is historically factual. Besides, propaganda does not have to be inaccurate; it can be true and good. The discrepancies in the gospel narratives: 1) can often be easily harmonized as the gospel writers providing different, not contradictory details, 2) must be assessed in light of the standards and conventions of the literary genre of ancient Greco-Roman biography, which often used techniques such as compression of time and events, 3) in any case, are all differences in minor details, not the basic facts, 4) arguably show that these are independent sources regarding Jesus’ resurrection, which actually strengthens the historical case for his resurrection.
Sources:
Wright, N.T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003.
Licona, Mike. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010.
IV. The Historical Data Related to Jesus’ Resurrection
The following are “historical bedrock,” facts that have strong evidence and that virtually all contemporary scholars regard as historical facts:
1) Jesus died by crucifixion.
2) Very shortly after Jesus’ death, the disciples had experiences that led them to believe and proclaim that Jesus had been resurrected and had appeared to them.
3) Within a few years after Jesus’ death, Paul converted after experiencing what he interpreted as a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to him.
A strong historical case for Jesus’ resurrection can be made based on the above three facts alone. However, we can add to them some additional facts which further strengthen the case:
4) Jesus was buried in a tomb and the tomb was found empty on Sunday. Women followers of Jesus then believed that they saw him resurrected and alive.
A strong majority of scholars accept the historicity of the empty tomb tradition. However, a significant minority do not. Those who argue against the historicity of the empty tomb tradition do so on the basis that Paul never mentions the empty tomb; in 1 Cor 15, Paul says that Jesus died, was buried, was raised, but never says his tomb was found empty. However, there are many historical details in recorded in the gospels that are widely regarded as historical facts that Paul does not mention in his epistles. Just because Paul does not mention something in his epistles does not mean that he was not aware of it. And even if Paul was not aware of the empty tomb tradition, this would not prove that it is not historically accurate. In any case, Paul believed that Jesus was buried and then raised, so he certainly believed that the place where Jesus was buried was now empty. Implicitly, he affirmed an empty grave/tomb.
The argument that the resurrection narratives in the gospels do preserve early eyewitness testimony has already been made above. The empty tomb tradition is found in the gospel of Mark, which is quite early. To this we may add the argument that the tomb must have been empty; otherwise, Christianity’s opponents would have quickly presented Jesus’ corpse to disprove the disciples’ claims. There is no evidence that any opponent of Christianity ever claimed that Jesus’ tomb wasn’t empty. Instead, we know from the gospel of Matthew that Jews in the late first century were claiming that Jesus’ disciples removed his body from the tomb. Also, the gospels depict Joseph of Arimethea, a member of the Sanhedrin, as the one who buried Jesus in a tomb. It is extremely unlikely early Christians would have invented this story of a member of the Sanhedrin, which they despised as the killers of their Lord, being the one who took care of the burial of Jesus’ body unless that is what actually happened.
5) The disciples despaired and lost hope; they did not expect him to rise from the dead. Then, they were transformed into bold proclaimers of the message about Jesus, willing to suffer and die for this belief.
First century Jews did not believe the Messiah was going to be killed, and they did not believe that any individual would be resurrected ahead of time before the general resurrection. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that the disciples did not understand Jesus’ predictions of his death and resurrection, apparently thinking it some kind of metaphor (Mark 9:9-10). The resurrection narratives repeatedly depict the disciples as skeptical and disbelieving. They do not believe the women when the women tell them they have seen Jesus, Thomas does not believe the other disciples when they tell him they have seen Jesus, and, even after seeing Jesus, they still have doubts, finding it hard to believe (Luke 24:41, Matt 28:17). This is embarrassing testimony to record about the founders and authoritative leaders of the church, which makes a very strong argument that it is historically accurate. Jesus’ resurrection was totally unexpected to them. Many early sources testify to the disciples’ willingness to suffer and die for their message about Jesus after they believed he had risen from the dead.
6) James the skeptical brother of Jesus converted, probably because of the risen Jesus appearing to him.
According to the gospels, James the brother of Jesus did not believe in him during his ministry (Mark 3:20-34, John 7:5). The fact that Jesus’ own family didn’t believe in him is embarrassing testimony about Jesus to record, so we can be confident that this is true. Yet, we know both from the NT and from Josephus that James was a prominent leader in the early church who suffered martyrdom for his Christian faith. Although it is possible that James changed his mind about Jesus prior to his crucifixion, the most likely explanation is that James converted because of Jesus’ resurrection appearance to him recorded in 1 Cor 15. This is significant because, like Paul, James had no reason to be predisposed to believing the Christian gospel was true. A very pious, Torah-observant Jew (Josephus tells us), James would have thought his brother to be a blasphemer cursed by God after his crucifixion; he would have needed strong proof that Jesus in fact had risen to convince him to join the Christian movement and die for it.
Sources:
Licona, Mike. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010.
Habermas, Gary R. and Michael R. Licona. The Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2004.
V. Assessing Alternative Hypotheses
Our criteria for assessing and weighing historical hypotheses are their plausibility, their explanatory scope, their explanatory power, and whether they are less ad hoc than other hypotheses. A hypothesis can be considered historically true if it meets these criteria better than competing hypotheses and does so to a significant degree.
A. Alternative Hypotheses: The Empty Tomb
The Swoon Theory: Jesus survived his crucifixion. He revived in the tomb and made his way to his disciples alive, having never died in the first place.
Response: This theory contradicts the historical bedrock. It was virtually impossible for someone to survive a Roman crucifixion. The Romans did their jobs well and knew how to tell if someone was dead. But even more fatal to this theory is the fact that, even if Jesus somehow survived and made his way back to his disciples, this pathetic, half-dead figure in desperate need of medical attention would never have convinced them that he was their Lord resurrected from the dead, only that he had somehow survived his crucifixion.
The Disciples Stole the Body: On this theory, the disciples were deceivers who made up the idea that Jesus was risen, having themselves taken Jesus’ body from the tomb.
Response: If there is one thing we can be certain of, it is that the disciples were sincere in their belief that Jesus had risen from the dead. They had no ulterior motive for making up the idea that Jesus had risen. They were not expecting Jesus to rise from the dead, and their proclamation that he was risen brought upon them persecution, suffering, and death. The idea that the disciples lied about Jesus’ resurrection and stole the body to cover up the truth is absurd. This theory contradicts the historical bedrock.
The Wrong Tomb Theory: On Easter morning, the women mistakenly went to the wrong tomb and found it empty, then told the disciples that Jesus’ tomb was empty, when in fact his body was still in his actual tomb.
Response: The women would have been careful to take note of where Jesus was buried; they would not have gone to the wrong tomb. Even if they had, another party (the disciples, Joseph of Arimethea, the Jewish leaders, or the Romans) would have corrected their mistake. In any case, this theory does not explain Jesus’ resurrection appearances to his disciples and to Paul.
Someone Else Stole the Body: On this theory, someone else stole Jesus’ body from his tomb. After Jesus’ followers found his tomb empty, they somehow became sincerely convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Response: The Jewish leaders or the Romans would not have taken Jesus’ body, but it is possible that some other party, such as grave robbers, could have taken his body. Of course, if guards were posted at Jesus’ tomb, as the gospel of Matthew claims, the theft of his body would have been impossible, but since many scholars doubt the historical accuracy of this detail in Matthew’s narrative, this is not a completely fatal argument against this hypothesis. Although there is no evidence for this hypothesis, it is a possible explanation for the empty tomb. However, it still does not explain Jesus’ resurrection appearances to his disciples and to Paul. The resurrection hypothesis is able to explain both the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances, and there is actually evidence for it, making it a better explanation for the empty tomb than this hypothesis.
B. Alternative Hypotheses: Jesus’ Appearances
The Legend Hypothesis: The disciples may have claimed to have seen Jesus after his death, but there are many similar, parallel stories of dying and rising gods or heroes in the ancient world, and the story of Jesus is just one among them. If we believe in Jesus’ resurrection, we would have to believe in all these stories, which is absurd. So, the evidence must not be strong enough to prove that Jesus really rose from the dead.
Response: The ancient stories of dying and rising gods are really not parallel to the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, since these myths deal with gods who are said to die and rise as a symbol of the cycles of the seasons, while Jesus was an actual historical human being who died and rose once at one particular point in history. The first story we find that is actually similar to the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection appears about 100 years after Jesus, and is possibly influenced by the story of Jesus. The historical evidence for other people coming back to life in the ancient world does not have anywhere near the quantity and quality of historical evidence that we have for Jesus’ resurrection. Every historical claim must be assessed on its own merits. The historical bedrock about Jesus’ death and appearances, acknowledged even by very skeptical scholars, is there and requires an explanation.
The Metaphorical Resurrection Hypothesis (John Dominic Crossan’s Hypothesis): Even after Jesus died, his followers believed that God’s kingdom was still continuing after his death, and thus that Jesus was still “alive” in some sense, even though he was dead. Then they “saw” Jesus through their reading of scripture and their psychological experiences. Jesus’ “resurrection” was originally meant metaphorically to refer to the “harrowing of hell.” This original metaphorical resurrection idea is found in the very early “Cross Gospel,” preserved within the second century Gospel of Peter. The resurrection appearances in the canonical gospels are not literal; they are really about conflicts between rival leaders in the early church.
Response: This hypothesis is based on a highly idiosyncratic and dubious speculative reconstruction of early Christian sources. Hardly any scholars agree that there was a “Cross Gospel” that preceded the canonical gospels. The resurrection story in the Gospel of Peter has many legendary embellishments, showing that it is early, not late. In any case, it is not at all clear that it, or any of the New Testament, contain the idea of the “harrowing of hell,” which is a late idea. It is very clear that the New Testament teaches a literal bodily resurrection, both of Jesus and of Christians in the future. There is no evidence at all that the canonical resurrection stories are about conflicts about church leadership. If the disciples believed Jesus was dead and had not actually risen, and that only his teachings remained, they never would have believed that he was the Messiah, the king of Israel, or that he had established God’s kingdom. They never would have turned from their despair and hopelessness to become bold proclaimers of Jesus’ Lordship. Furthermore, the conversion of Paul, the enemy of Christianity, is left unexplained. This hypothesis is highly implausible and ad hoc, and lacks explanatory scope and power.
The “Spiritual” Resurrection Hypothesis: The disciples and Paul indeed saw Jesus after his death, but these were visions of a disembodied Jesus, not of Jesus’ corpse raised from the dead. This convinced the disciples that, although he was dead, Jesus was “resurrected” spiritually, his soul or spirit being in heaven with God. Since, in I Cor 15, Paul places his experience of the risen Jesus in the same category as the other apostles, and since, in Acts, Paul’s experience of Jesus seems to have been a spiritual vision of heavenly light, rather than an objective seeing of Jesus’ physical body in space and time, we should assume that that a spiritual vision of a spiritual Jesus was what the other apostles had experienced as well. Later Christians exchanged this original spiritual message for the idea of a literal bodily resurrection, and invented the empty tomb story.
Response: This hypothesis is highly problematic. For early first century Jews, “resurrection” always meant bodily resurrection; it never referred to a disembodied afterlife. First century Jews believed in an afterlife in terms of future bodily resurrection, but they also believed in heavenly visions, ghosts, spirits, and disembodied souls existing in the intermediate state. If their experience of Jesus was non-bodily, they would have spoken about it in those other terms rather than speaking of Jesus’ resurrection. Since the disciples were not expecting Jesus (or anyone else, for that matter), would rise from the dead ahead of the general resurrection, they never would have interpreted their visions of Jesus as his resurrection unless the evidence that he indeed was raised bodily from the dead was strong enough to override their preconceived notions.
The argument that Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus was a spiritual vision of a non-bodily Jesus is highly problematic. It is very clear from studying Paul’s writings that he believed that the future general resurrection would be bodily and physical, that Jesus had been raised bodily from the dead, and that he had seen the bodily resurrected Jesus with his own eyes. It is not clear that the book of Acts depicts Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus as merely a spiritual vision, but, in any case, however the book of Acts, written probably decades later by another author, may describe Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus, we cannot use that to override Paul’s own claims about his experience of the bodily risen Christ.
Finally, if, as has been argued above, the resurrection narratives in the gospels do record early eyewitness testimony to Jesus’ resurrection, then it has already been established that the disciples’ experience with the risen Jesus was a bodily encounter in space and time, regardless of what Paul’s later experience was.
The Hallucination Hypothesis: It is historically certain that Jesus’ disciples and Paul had experiences that led them to sincerely believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead. However, these experiences can be explained psychologically as being hallucinations rather than real experiences of the risen Christ. (In the book of Acts, Peter has a vision, and in II Corinthians, Paul claims to have had a vision, which suggests that these two at least were prone to having “visions.”) We know that grief hallucinations among widows and widowers are quite common. The disciples could have had these and misinterpreted them as actually seeing Jesus. The disciples were filled with sorrow, guilt and grief, and they wanted to believe that Jesus was still alive; these psychological factors led them to have hallucinations of Jesus, perhaps while in a “trance” or “an altered state of consciousness.” Perhaps Peter was the first one to have a hallucination of Jesus, and, after he told it to the other disciples, they started claiming to have seen Jesus too, because of “communal delusion” or “mass ecstasy” (as in modern claims of the Virgin Mary appearing to groups). Jesus’ brothers got caught up in these group experiences. As for Paul, he had secret doubts about Judaism and was secretly attracted to Christianity; he subconsciously resolved this problem with a hallucination, which allowed him to convert. The empty tomb story was then made up later, or perhaps there is a naturalistic explanation for it.
Response: This is probably the most interesting naturalistic hypothesis regarding Jesus’ appearances, as it fully takes account of the disciples’ sincerity and tries to explain all of the data. However, it has a number of problems. Hallucinations are rare and typically take place only under certain psychological or biological circumstances. Regarding the statistics about how common grief hallucinations are, it is highly unlikely that a disciple who had lost his rabbi would be anywhere near as likely as a married person who lost their spouse to have a grief hallucination. But for argument’s sake, let us assume that he would be. The statistics frequently cited for the frequency of grief hallucinations (close to half) seem quite impressive, but when one examines this research more closely, it turns out that the great majority of these are merely a “sense of presence” of the dead spouse, while only 14% of widows have visual hallucinations. Furthermore, the likelihood of having a grief hallucination is closely related to one’s age and to the length of time married. The disciples were all relatively young and only had been Jesus’ disciples for about three years. Taking into account all of this, we find that, statistically, perhaps one of the 11 disciples would have had a grief hallucination of Jesus.
It is difficult enough to psychoanalyze people right next to us in the present; scholars who attempt to psychoanalyze the disciples, who lived 2,000 years ago in a different culture, in order to provide a theory for why they “saw” Jesus, are engaging in quite dubious and ad hoc speculation. It is not at all clear that the disciples were filled with guilt at having failed Jesus. Jesus was supposed to be the Messiah who would save Israel, but he had failed and been killed; isn’t it more likely that they would have thought that Jesus had failed them? Getting into a “trance” or “altered state of consciousness” usually requires deliberate work; it doesn’t just happen. It is unlikely that Jesus’ skeptical brother James would have hallucinated or got caught up in group experiences about Jesus after his death; as a pious Jew, he would have regarded Jesus’ accursed death on a cross as further reinforcing his disbelief. Even if the disciples had hallucinations about Jesus, Paul would not have hallucinated something that contradicted his beliefs and his way of life, so his conversion is left unexplained. There is no evidence that Paul was dissatisfied with Judaism and had secret doubts or was secretly attracted to Christianity prior to his conversion (In Phil 3:6, he says that, prior to his conversion, he was “as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”).
The argument that Peter and Paul were prone to visions actually backfires, since they knew that these visions were visions, while both claimed to have seen Jesus physically, not just in a vision. This brings up the point that the hallucination theory has one of the same problems as the “spiritual” resurrection” hypothesis; first century Jews believed in heavenly visions, ghosts, spirits, and disembodied souls. Given this, how did merely subjective hallucinatory visions convince them that Jesus had risen from the dead, especially since they were not expecting Jesus or anyone else to be resurrected prior to the future general resurrection? Why didn’t they interpret them as seeing Jesus in the intermediate state? The hallucination theory cannot explain some of the details of the resurrection narratives, such as Jesus eating and being touched. It also cannot explain why Jesus was sometimes not recognized at first (Luke 24:13-31; John 20:15, 21:4); a grief hallucination is always immediately recognized as the lost loved one, rather than a mysterious figure who is only later recognized as the loved one.
One of the most problematic aspects of the hallucination theory is that it cannot explain the group appearances. A group of people all having the same hallucination is virtually impossible. The theory that only Peter had a hallucination and that the other disciples then came to believe because of the power of suggestion, “communal delusion,” or “mass ecstasy” attempts to sidestep this problem. However, the power of suggestion is not anywhere near strong enough to convince an entire group of people that they have seen something they haven’t seen and to stake their lives on it. “Communal delusion” or “mass ecstasy” really do not explain anything; what did they see that convinced them so strongly that they had seen Jesus alive? (The comparison to modern Marian apparitions really doesn’t constitute an argument, since there is no proof that these alleged appearances are false and merely psychological; they may in fact be real.). James, certainly, would not have got caught up in “mass ecstasy” after Jesus’ execution as a criminal and blasphemer had strengthened his belief that Jesus was a heretic.
In conclusion, while the hallucination theory makes a valiant effort to provide a naturalistic explanation for the historical data about Jesus’ fate, it is ad hoc and lacking in explanatory power and plausibility, making it significantly inferior to the resurrection hypothesis.
Sources:
Rees, W. Dewi. “The Hallucinations of Widowhood.” The British Medical Journal 4, no. 5778 (1971): 37-41.
Licona, Mike. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010.
Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment?: A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Ludemann. Edited by Paul Copan and Ronald K. Tacelli. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000.
The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright in Dialogue. Edited by Robert B. Stewart. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006.
Did the Resurrection Happen?: A Conversation with Gary Habermas and Antony Flew. Edited by David Baggett. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2009.
VI. Conclusion
Unlike other historical hypotheses, the resurrection hypothesis (that Jesus really did rise from the dead on Sunday morning) plausibly explains all of the historical data without any strain. It is thus the best historical explanation for the data about Jesus’ resurrection, providing a better historical explanation than competing hypotheses to a significant degree when assessed by the criteria of plausibility, explanatory scope and power, and being less ad hoc (it requires only one outside assumption, a miracle-working being (for which there is actually good independent evidence)). We are thus justified in concluding that it is historically true.
A skeptic may then ask: So what? Even if Jesus did rise from the dead, this doesn’t necessarily prove that God raised him from the dead. Perhaps there is some naturalistic explanation, something about the universe that we don’t understand yet, that caused him to rise from the dead. Or perhaps something else raised him from the dead: an alien, a fairy, or some other supernatural being. In response, we know enough about the laws of the universe to know that resurrections do not happen naturally; this is why virtually all metaphysical naturalists deny that Jesus rose from the dead rather than absurdly trying to argue that it was a natural event. It is possible that some being other than God raised Jesus from the dead, but what we have to ask ourselves is not what is merely possible, but what we have evidence for and what is the most reasonable belief based on what we know. There is no strong evidence for the existence of fairies and aliens, but miracles that happen when people pray to God provide good evidence for the existence of a miracle-working God. Despite disagreement among historical Jesus scholars about many issues, virtually all scholars are agreed about the following two historical facts about the historical Jesus: he was believed by his contemporaries to be a miracle-worker and exorcist, and he believed himself to be God’s eschatological agent (the one through whom the “kingdom of God” would be established). Given these historical facts, the hypothesis that it was God who raised Jesus from the dead is by far that best explanation; it fits perfectly with the historical context of who Jesus was and what he did, while other explanations are extremely arbitrary and ad hoc.
A skeptic may then respond: Well, even if God did raise Jesus from the dead, that doesn’t necessarily prove that the apostle’s interpretation of the significance of that event, or even that Jesus’ own interpretation of the significance of that event, is true; it doesn’t necessarily prove that the New Testament is all true or that Christianity is all true. In response, yes, just by itself the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead does not prove that the entire Christian worldview is all true. However, it does provide strong evidence that Christianity is true. Again, we have to ask ourselves, not just what is possible, but what the most reasonable explanation is. The most reasonable belief about the significance of God raising Jesus from the dead is that God was vindicating Jesus and Jesus’ extraordinary claims about himself. The most reasonable belief is that Jesus’ disciples did not rush off to seriously falsify their beloved master’s message after being convinced that he was the Lord of all creation, but that they went out to proclaim the truth about Jesus, who he was, and what he taught. The most reasonable conclusion to reach is that the Christian gospel is true.
Note: This post originally appeared as part of a series debating Christianity on the blog All Things Matter.