During the first few centuries of Christianity, debates raged about who Jesus was. Some said he was a man whom God had chosen for a special mission. Others asserted that he was a man whom God had elevated to divinity. Some said that he was purely divine. Ultimately, the official church position rested on the belief that Jesus was man and God. This essay will first describe  different views about Jesus and then explore the possibly unanswerable question, who is right?

Historical Context

Religion in The Roman Empire

Turmoil marked the century before Jesus, when the Roman Republic transitioned into an imperial empire. The Republic had relied on an unwritten code of social and political norms, including performing sacrifices to the gods and the duty of ordinary citizens–mostly farmers–to become soldiers when Rome was threatened. Decades of war, however, enabled wealthy senators to buy the land of farmer-soldiers who had served the republic for long periods of time.  Citizens lost faith in the Senate and began to place their trust in strongmen like Julius Caesar and his adopted son, Octavian (Augustus). Octavian was victorious in the civil wars that followed Caesar’s murder and initiated the pax romana (Roman peace), which facilitated the spread of Christianity.

During the transition from republic to monarchy, the average Roman’s faith in the gods waned.[1] Elites, perhaps 2-5 percent of the population, turned to philosophies, such as stoicism, epicureanism, and Platonism. Mystery cults, such as Isis and Mithras, attracted 5-10 percent of the population, mainly from soldiers and the middle class. By the time of Jesus, the most prevalent religion in the Roman Empire was arguably the imperial cult, which was integrated into the polytheistic system (about 90 percent of the population) and functioned as a form of loyalty test.[2] People worshiped Augustus, the first emperor, as the “Son of God.” Skeptic Bart Ehrman says that the emperor and Jesus “were the only two figures that we know of from antiquity who were actually called ‘the Son of God.’”[3]

Diverse views of the afterlife were associated with the variety of religions and philosophies in the Roman Empire. According to Gemini, academic studies of epitaphs on tombstones provide “a direct, unfiltered look at what people actually believed would happen to them—revealing a fascinating mix of hope, dark humor, and philosophical resignation.”[4] Here is one example of contrasting  epitaphs:

Pagan Formula: Vale ("Farewell" or "Goodbye forever") or Quod es, fui; quod sum, eris ("What you are, I was; what I am, you will be").

The Theme: A stark reminder of mortality (memento mori). The dialogue between the dead and the living ends in a "shuttering" of the relationship.

Christian Formula: In mente habeas ("Keep [me] in mind") or Pete pro nobis ("Pray for us").

The Theme: The relationship is active. The dead are not just memories; they are intercessors. The linguistic bridge remains open, suggesting that the "Great Divide" is not an absolute wall.[5]

Wright summarizes the variety of afterlife beliefs in the Empire:

Who were the dead thought to be, in the ancient pagan world? They were beings that had once been embodied human beings, but were now souls, shades, or eidola [an unsubstantial image; apparition; phantom]. Where were they? Most likely in Hades; possibly in the Isles of the Blessed, or Tartarus; just conceivably, reincarnated into a different body altogether. They might occasionally appear to living mortals; they might still be located somewhere in the vicinity of their tombs; but they were basically in a different world. What was wrong? Nothing, for a good Platonist or a Stoic like Epictetus; the soul was well rid of its body–a sentiment echoed by many non-philosophers in a world without modern medicine, and often without much justice.[6]

According to Wright, the idea of resurrection, “namely the coming to life in a full and bodily sense of those presently dead,”[7] was alien to the Roman world, although belief in spirits and in humans becoming gods was not. The exception was the Pharisees of second-temple Judaism, who believed in a collective resurrection “that YHWH would accomplish at the very end of the present age.”[8] Sadducees did not believe in resurrection, according to Wright,[9] which underlines the uniqueness of Jesus, even to Jews:

There are no traditions about a Messiah being raised to life: most Jews of this period hoped for resurrection, many Jews of this period hoped for a Messiah, but nobody put those two hopes together until the early Christians did so.[10]

Without the belief in Jesus’s resurrection, Jesus, according to Wright, would have been merely another failed Messiah, of which there were quite a few.

Judaism’s Failed Messiahs

Gemini provides information on men who had been acclaimed as the Messiah, especially after the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE. All failed in liberating the Jewish people. Some came before Jesus; others after.

●     Simon of Peraea (c. 4 BCE). He was acclaimed as king by his followers ("anointing" a king was often synonymous with identifying a potential Messiah). After burning down the royal palace at Jericho and plundering Herod’s estates, General Gratus pursued, caught, and beheaded him. Simon’s movement dissolved.

●     Athronges the Shepherd (c. 4–2 BCE). Athronges and his four brothers, all large, imposing men, led a long-running guerrilla war against the Romans and Archelaus, Herod’s son. Athronges and his brothers eventually surrendered or were defeated.

●     Judas, son of Hezekiah (c. 4 BCE). Judas and his followers attacked the royal armory at Sepphoris (near Nazareth) immediately after Herod's death. The Roman governor of the region crushed the rebellion and crucified 2,000 rebels.

●     Judas the Galilean (6 CE). Judas’s revolt, which had a theological slogan of “no king but God,” was crushed. Judas was killed and his followers scattered.

●     Theudas (c. 44–46 CE). Roman cavalry slaughtered Theudas’s large following (Acts 5:36 says that he had about 400 men) and brought his head back to Jerusalem. His movement died with him.

●     "The Egyptian" (c. 52–58 CE). Josephus and Acts (21:38) mention this man, who led thousands of followers to the Mount of Olives and claimed that at his command the walls of Jerusalem would fall. When the Roman governor attacked his army, he fled and vanished into history.

●     Simon bar Kokhba (132–135 CE). Gemini says: “This is the most significant ‘failed’  messiah because he was officially acclaimed as such by the leading rabbi of the day, Rabbi Akiva, who applied the ‘Star of Jacob’ prophecy (Numbers 24:17) to him. . . He led a massive, initially successful revolt that established an independent Jewish state for three years. However, he was eventually crushed by the Romans at Betar. . . . After his death, his name was changed by the rabbis from Bar Kokhba (‘Son of a Star’) to Bar Koziba (Son of a Lie’).”[11]

Doctrinal Variations in the Early Church

Today, Catholics and nearly all Orthodox and Protestant denominations accept the trinitarian conclusions of the Nicene (325 CE) and Chalcedon (451 CE) councils. Contemporary Christian orthodoxy asserts:

1. There is one God in whom there are three persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

2. Jesus is of the same essence and being as the Father.

3. Jesus is one person who exists in two natures, which are joined without confusion, change, division, or separation.

4. Because he possessed a human body, soul, mind, and will, Jesus could experience hunger, fatigue, ignorance of certain facts, and true physical pain.

5. Because his human will conformed absolutely to his divine nature and will, Jesus was without sin.

6. Jesus does not oscillate between the divine and human; he is always and simultaneously God and Man acting in a single, unified consciousness.[12]

Although this view of Jesus took more than two centuries to develop fully, its fundamentals were expressed in the creeds that were recited soon after the resurrection of Jesus. 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 summarized what had happened: died-buried-raised-appeared. 1 Corinthians 8:6 says that all things come from the Father and through the one Lord, Jesus Christ. Philippians 2:6-11 asserts Jesus’s pre-existence, his voluntary emptying of his divine status to take on the “nature  of a servant,” his unfailing obedience to God even unto death, and his exaltation to Lord Jesus Christ.

These creeds generated a fundamental tension because Jewish monotheism, which was the soil from which Christianity sprung, was incompatible with the notion that Jesus is God. Moreover, if Jesus is God, how could he appear to be a human who did not know things, who learned things (e.g., how to read), and could bleed, suffer, and die? If Jesus was indeed God and man, what was his inner nature like? Many of the movements that arose during Christianity’s first few centuries wrestled with these questions. Let us examine the major variations, which were eventually declared to be heretical.

Sabellianism. Seeking to preserve God’s unity, Sabellianism, or modalism, “taught that the Godhead is a monad, expressing itself in three operations: as Father, in creation; as Son, in redemption; and as Holy Spirit, in sanctification.”[13] Though initially sympathetic to Sabellianism, Pope Calixtus (217-222 CE) condemned it and excommunicated its founder, Sabellius.

Arianism. Attempting to preserve God’s transcendence, Arianism said that because “the Godhead is immutable, the Son, who is mutable, must, therefore, be deemed a creature who has been called into existence out of nothing and has had a beginning. Moreover, the Son can have no direct knowledge of the Father, since the Son is finite and of a different order of existence.”[14] Though condemned by the Council of Nicaea in 325, Arianism continued until the end of the seventh century to have episodic imperial support and followers, especially among the Germanic tribes who had been converted by an Arian Christian.

Docetism. A form of gnosticism, Docetism ”held that matter was evil and the spirit good and claimed that salvation was attained only through esoteric knowledge, or gnosis.”[15] According to Docetism, which wanted to preserve God’s purity, Jesus’s suffering, including his crucifixion, was merely appearance, because Jesus “did not have a real or natural body during his life on earth but only an apparent or phantom one.”[16]

Ebionites. The Ebionites (first through fourth centuries) explained Jesus’s human suffering with an approach that was the opposite of Docetism and that sought to preserve Jewish monotheism. They believed Jesus was only a man who obviously could suffer and die like other men. Jesus, however, was different in that God had “adopted” him to be a prophet. Although scholars debate details about the Ebionites, some scholars believe that some Ebionites may have accepted the resurrection, interpreting it as God’s way of affirming Jesus’s righteousness, not as a sign of his divinity.[17]

Nazarenes. The Nazarenes were another Jewish-Christian group of the fourth century. They believed in Jesus’s resurrection and divinity, as well as his supernatural birth. However, they lived as observant Jews[18] and sought to preserve Jewish practices. Hence, they occupied a middle ground between the Ebionites, who viewed Jesus as a man, and the Pauline Christians,  who worshiped Jesus as God and did not observe the Mosaic Law.

After the Council of Nicaea proclaimed that Jesus was both God and man, focus shifted to his inner nature.

Apollinarianism concluded that Jesus must have only a divine mind (Logos) because if he had a human mind, he would be prone to sin.[19] Nestorianism wanted to ensure that the divine Jesus didn’t overwhelm the human Jesus, so they emphasized a separation of the two natures.[20] Monophytism maintained that “Jesus Christ’s nature remains altogether divine and not human even though he has taken on an earthly and human body with its cycle of birth, life, and death.”[21] In the seventh century Monothelitism affirmed “that the divine and human natures in Christ, while quite distinct in his one person, had but one will.”[22] Miaphysitism asserted that “Jesus Christ possesses a single, unified nature where the divine and human are inseparably united.”[23]

It seems, then, that during the early Christian centuries, somebody somewhere proposed each of the possible theological “permutations” concerning Jesus: one God expressing itself in three operations or “masks” (Sabellianism), divine mind within human body (Apollinarianism), divine apparition appearing to be human (Docetism), human with special grace from God (Arianism, Ebionites), divine nature only (Monophysitism), divine and human natures but one divine will (Monothelitism), divinity and humanity equally present in a single nature (Miaphysitism), divine and human natures loosely united (Nestorianism), and finally the orthodox Christology that came to predominate: Jesus is of the same substance as the father and has two natures and two wills, with the human will conforming to the divine. And most importantly, Jesus was raised from the dead.

The Resurrection

Different opinions on Jesus often reflect diverse views about his alleged resurrection and its implications. The resurrection, therefore, is a pivotal event for Christianity: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Corinthians 15:13-14). The history of earlier supposed Messiahs tells us that Jesus’s crucifixion should have ended his messianic movement. The movement continued, however, because followers believed that Jesus had come back bodily from the dead.

Let us explore the resurrection of Jesus from the standpoint of the two possibilities: Jesus did not rise from the dead; Jesus did rise from the dead.

First, as a point of reference, here is an abridgement of Fudge’s useful summary[24] of who reputedly witnessed post-crucifixion appearances of Jesus:

●     Peter saw the resurrected Jesus separately from the other disciples (1 Cor. 15:8, Luke 24:34).

●     Jesus’s brother James, whose initial skepticism turned into belief and martyrdom, according to Josephus (1 Cor. 15:7, John 7:5, Mark 3:21, Acts 12:17, 15:13; Gal. 1:19, Josephus Antiquities).

●     All 11 remaining disciples thought that they saw and heard the resurrected Jesus (Acts 1:1–26, Luke 24:33–51).

●     Other early witnesses (Acts 1:21–26),

●     Two disciples traveling to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–32).

●     Group of disciples in Jerusalem (Luke 24:33–51, 1 Cor. 15:5b [1 Cor. 15:6 also mentions an appearance to “500.”]).

●     John 20 describes two group appearances to the disciples in Jerusalem—one without Thomas and one with Thomas.

●     Group of disciples in Galilee (Matthew 28:16–20). John 21:1–14 also describes a group appearance in Galilee, although in this passage only seven disciples are specifically mentioned.

●     Women: All four Gospel accounts are in agreement that a number of women from Galilee were at the crucifixion (Mark 15:40–41; Matthew 27:55; Luke 23:49,55; and John 19:25), that women were the first to see the empty tomb with the stone already rolled away . . . Mark 16:1 lists Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome; Matthew 28:1 lists Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary”, which based on 27:55, is the mother of James and Joses; Luke 24:10 lists Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, in addition to the “other women”; John 20:1–2 only lists Mary Magdalene by name, but implies that there were other women by the expression “we don’t know where they have put him.”

Jesus did NOT Rise From the Dead

Skeptics often say that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Given that the resurrection, if it occurred, would be the most extraordinary event in history, it is impossible, from a practical standpoint, to provide sufficient evidence or rational argument to convince a skeptic that Jesus rose from the dead. Consequently, unless one approaches the question, “who is Jesus,” from a position of faith, or at least openness to having faith, the proposition, “Jesus did NOT rise from the dead,” will be an assumption, not a potential question. Most skeptics would probably agree with Ehrman, who says “that some of the followers of Jesus (most of them? All of them?) came to believe that Jesus was physically raised from the dead.”[25] Skeptics, then, need to explain how this belief arose.

A number of theories attempt to account for the belief in Jesus’s resurrection, while denying that resurrection actually happened. These include Ehrman’s process theory, swoon theory, various hallucination theories, myth theories, and theories that claim that Jesus, through charismatic power, implanted suggestions in his followers that would later cause them to believe in the “risen Jesus delusion.”

Ehrman’s Process Theory

Bart Ehrman says “that only a few followers had visions, including Peter, Paul, Mary and probably James. They told others about those visions, convincing most of their close associates that Jesus was raised from the dead, but not all of them. Eventually, these stories were retold and embellished, leading to the story that all disciples had seen the risen Jesus.”[26]

Ehrman points to textual inconsistencies among the four Gospels to impugn their reliability and credibility.

Who was the first person to go to the tomb? Was it Mary Magdalene by herself (John)? Or Mary along with another Mary (Matthew)? Or Mary along with another Mary and Salome (Mark)? Or Mary, Mary, Joanna, and a number of other women (Luke)? Was the stone already rolled away when they arrived at the tomb (Mark, Luke, and John), or explicitly not (Matthew)? Whom did they see there? An angel (Matthew), a man (Mark), or two men (Luke)?  Did they immediately go and tell some of the disciples what they had seen (John), or not (Matthew, Mark, and Luke)? What did the person or people at the tomb tell the women to do? To tell the disciples that Jesus would meet them in Galilee (Matthew and Mark)? Or to remember what Jesus had told them earlier when he had been in Galilee (Luke)? Did the women then go tell the disciples what they were told to tell them (Matthew and Luke), or not (Mark)? Did the disciples see Jesus (Matthew, Luke, and John), or not (Mark)? Where did they see him? – only in Galilee (Matthew), or only in Jerusalem (Luke)?[27]

Other scholars, however, do not see a problem with these minor discrepancies, none of which contradicts the vital claim of a bodily risen Jesus. Blomberg, for example, says that the “overall genre of the Synoptics most closely resembles ancient biographies rather than novels or works of fiction. . . .[and] apparent contradictions among parallel Gospel accounts can usually be explained by the historical conventions of the day.”[28]

Ehrman further argues that Jesus did not claim divinity until the last gospel to be written, i.e., John. In earlier gospels, according to Ehrman, Jesus appeared to be an apocalyptic prophet who was

. . . very much a man of his time. And his time was an age of full-throated apocalyptic fervor. . . Jesus taught that the age he lived in was controlled by forces of evil but that God would soon intervene to destroy everything and everyone opposed to him, God would then bring in a good, utopian kingdom on earth, where there would be no more pain and suffering. Jesus himself would be the ruler of this kingdom, with his twelve disciples serving under him. And all this was to happen very soon–within his own generation.[29]

Ehrman maintains that Jesus’s fame would have generated so much talk in an oral culture that distorted stories about him were sure to spread.

The stories were being told by word of mouth, year after year, decade after decade, among lots of people in different parts of the world, in different languages, and there was no way to control what one person said to the next about Jesus’s words and deeds. Everyone knows what happens to stories that circulate this way. Details get changed, episodes get invented, events get exaggerated, impressive accounts get made even more impressive, and so on.[30]

In a later section of this essay, we will discuss how the study of oral history suggests that Ehrman’s “telephone game” analysis exaggerates the amount of distortion that is likely to occur in oral accounts.

Ehrman also proposes that the "fullness" of Jesus's divinity was less for the earlier gospels and letters than the latter. Early letters (e.g., Romans 1:3-4), according to Ehrman, suggest that Jesus became the Son of God at his resurrection. Mark (70 CE) says that God’s spirit descended upon Jesus when he was baptized. Matthew and Luke (c. 80-90 CE) suggest that Jesus’s being born from a virgin indicates that he was divine from the womb. And lastly, John (c. 90-95 CE) says that Jesus is the “Word” who is eternal with God. In Ehrman’s view, this progression of views reveals that the earliest Christians adhered to a “low Christology” in which Jesus was a man who had been “adopted” by God in some way, as evidenced by visions of his resurrection that certain disciples shared with others. This view of Jesus as a divinely inspired prophet was consistent with his Jewish heritage. By the time of John’s gospel, however, Jesus’s followers had “promoted” him to equality with God, something that was blasphemous to Jews.

Challenges to Ehrman

Christian scholars challenge Ehrman’s argument about an evolving view of Jesus among the early Christians. “I came” phrases (e.g., “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:17) suggests a pre-existent Jesus without explicitly saying so. Also, Jesus seems to claim authority above the Torah when he says things such as, "You have heard it said... but I say to you." Jesus does not say he is God, but as scholars like Richard Bauckham point out,

Jesus does things in Mark and Matthew that, in a Jewish context, only YHWH (God) has the right to do: Forgiving Sins: When Jesus forgives the paralytic in Mark 2:5, the scribes correctly ask, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" By not correcting them, Jesus is claiming a divine prerogative. Commanding the Sea: In the Jewish scriptures, only God stills the storm (Psalm 107:29). When Jesus calms the sea in Mark 4:39, the disciples' terror stems from realizing they are in the presence of someone wielding divine power.[31]

Hurtado argued that the early Christian view of who Jesus was revealed itself in devotional practices, i.e., what Christians did when they gathered together. Gemini provides three supporting quotes from Hurtado’s work:

On Hymns: "Early Christian devotion included a significant body of hymns and prayers directed to or focusing on Jesus... We have clear evidence of the singing of hymns to Christ as to a god in the early second century (e.g., Pliny, Letters 10.96), and the practice is heavily reflected in the New Testament itself (e.g., Phil. 2:6-11; Col. 1:15-20)" (Hurtado, 2003, p. 138).

On Prayer and Calling on the Name: "One of the most remarkable features of early Christian devotion is prayer offered to Jesus, or to God 'through' Jesus... To 'call upon the name of the Lord [Jesus]' became a defining characteristic of Christians from the earliest weeks of the movement (cf. 1 Cor. 1:2; Acts 9:14, 21)" (Hurtado, 2003, p. 142).

On Baptism in Jesus' Name: "Baptism was practiced from the very beginning 'in the name of Jesus Christ' (e.g., Acts 2:38; 8:16; 1 Cor. 1:13-15). In the ancient Jewish context, to ritualize entry into a community in the name of a human figure was completely unprecedented. It signifies that Jesus was understood to be the absolute locus of divine salvation and ownership" (Hurtado, 2003, pp. 145–146).[32]

Also challenging Ehrman's view of an evolving Christology is a passage appearing in Matthew and Luke called the “Joannine thunderbolt” because the passage sounds like the Gospel of John: "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Matthew 11:27 / Luke 10:22).  Gemini explains the significance of this verse: “In 1st-century Jewish thought, God is ultimately ‘unknowable’ to humans. For Jesus to claim a mutual, exclusive knowledge of God suggests a shared essence.”[33]

Swoon Theory

Roman soldiers typically left the bodies of the crucified to be scavenged by birds and other animals. According to Gemini, however, “many historians and archaeologists argue that while scavenger-desecration was the standard rule, there were documented exceptions, especially in the province of Judea.”[34] Historian Tom Holland confirms this statement.[35]

Despite the number of crucifixions in the ancient world, there was no archaeological evidence regarding crucifixion until 1968, when archaeologists discovered the entombed bones of a crucified Jew named Yehohanan.[36] His heel bones were held together by a nail, a finding that supports the Bible’s description of Jesus’s execution. His legs were also broken, which is consistent with exceptions made in Judea. The leg bones were sometimes broken to hasten death so that the body could be buried on the day of execution, which was the Jewish tradition.

According to the swoon theory, it is conceivable that Roman soldiers, mistakenly thinking that an unconscious Jesus was dead, did not bother to break his legs or administer the spear thrust confirming death (which would make the biblical account wrong on that detail) and allowed his body to be taken for burial. To everyone’s surprise, however, Jesus later awakened and walked out of his tomb.

Wright reveals the weakness of the swoon theory, to which few scholars subscribe:

. . . we must stress that the Romans knew how to kill people. The reappearance of a battered and exhausted Jesus would hardly have suggested that he had gone through death and out the other side, that the kingdom of God had indeed come, that “the resurrection” had occurred, and that he was indeed the Messiah who had defeated God’s enemies and would rebuild the Temple.[37]

In other words, upon seeing a staggering, nearly dead Jesus, the disciples would not have said, “He is risen!” They would have said, “Miracle of miracles, he survived!” Moreover, if the survivor Jesus, with the cooperation of his disciples, concocted a tale about his having risen from the dead, where was Jesus and what did he do and say between that event and his eventual real death? Would not his enemies have exposed the hoax? And would his closest disciples endure persecution and give their lives to perpetrate a hoax? Given all of its problems, the swoon theory is not a feasible explanation for the belief in Jesus’s resurrection.

Grief Hallucinations

The term, “grief hallucinations” (also called “bereavement visions” or “bereavement hallucinations” or “bereavement-related sensory experiences” - BRSE) refers to a mourning person’s experience of a deceased loved one. “Common experiences include sensing the presence of their loved one who’s passed, seeing an apparition of them, hearing the sound of their voice, and smelling their favorite food or fragrance.”[38]

Grief hallucinations are common. In 1971 Rees conducted a seminal study in which “227 widows and 66 widowers were interviewed to determine the extent to which they had hallucinatory experiences of their dead spouse. The people interviewed formed 80.7% of all widowed people resident within a defined area, in mid-Wales, and 94.2% of those suitable, through the absence of incapacitating illness, for interview.”[39] Within this generalizable sample of a geographic area almost “half the people interviewed had hallucinations or illusions of the dead spouse. . . The most common type of hallucination is the illusion of feeling the presence of the dead spouse. [about 40% in Rees’s study] . . . Auditory hallucinations (13.3%) are slightly less common than visual hallucinations (14.0%), and more than one person in 10 has spoken to the dead spouse.”[40] Smith’s review found that larger studies tended to align with Rees’s results, while smaller studies tended to find higher rates of bereavement hallucinations.[41]

Today, 41% of Americans say they believe in ghosts, and about 20% say they have personally encountered a ghost.[42] Given this finding and the prevalence of grief hallucinations, it is not surprising that resurrection skeptics have proposed hallucination, or vision, theories to account for the disciples’ belief in the risen Jesus. The vision theories presume that certain followers of Jesus may have hallucinated seeing and talking with him after his death, and that these hallucinations were crafted into a narrative of a risen Jesus commissioning his disciples to carry his message to the world. The power of that narrative among Jesus’s followers produced a delusional belief in a risen Jesus among those who did not claim to have seen him.

Celsus, a Platonist philosopher who lived in the latter part of the second century, anticipated many of the arguments made by modern vision/hallucination theorists.

But who really saw this? A hysterical woman, as you admit and perhaps one other person - both deluded by his sorcery, or else so wrenched with grief at his failure that they hallucinated him risen from the dead by a sort of wishful thinking. This mistaking a fantasy for reality is not at all uncommon; indeed, it has happened to thousands. Just as possible, these deluded women wanted to impress the others - who had the good sense to have abandoned him - by spreading their hallucinations about as “visions.” After getting some few to believe them, it was a small matter for the fire of superstition to spread.[43]

During the past two centuries variations on Celsus’s critique of the resurrection have appeared.

Gerd Lüdemann, for example, proposed that Peter’s guilt about betraying Jesus led to a vision that Peter experienced as a risen Jesus. Peter then convinced other disciples “that the resurrection of Jesus signalled that the endtime was near and God’s Kingdom was coming, when the dead would rise again, as evidenced by Jesus. This revitalized the disciples, spurring their new mission.”[44]

Jack Kent proposed that grief hallucinations were a kind of sensory glitch following Jesus’s death. “Over the 40 to 70 years before the Gospels were written, these subjective, internal ‘visions’ were ‘physicalized’ by oral tradition to defend against critics and to bolster the authority of the Church.”[45] Thus, the gospels were, in essence, fictionalized accounts to make sense of, and exalt the importance of, normal grief hallucinations among otherwise insignificant men and women.

New Testament scholar Michael Goulder offered a hybrid model in which collective delusions follow an individual’s hallucination. A group of followers did not hallucinate. Instead, affected by Peter’s report of a risen Jesus, they developed a collective delusion in which, like group sightings of Bigfoot or the Virgin Mary, the suggestion of a risen Jesus might cause some to “see a shadow, a flickering light, or a stranger in the distance and—primed by Peter’s suggestion—simultaneously misinterpret that physical data as the risen Jesus.”[46] Thus, the 500 witnesses of the risen Jesus to which Paul referred in 1 Corinthians 15:6 might have experienced something similar, in terms of psychological process, to the thousands who saw the sun dance at Fatima in 1917 (though thousands of others did NOT see the sun whirl).[47]

Some vision proposals say that hallucinations were reinforced by social psychological factors such as cognitive dissonance. Jesus’s death created dissonance in disciples who had expected to participate in the establishment of the Kingdom of God under Jesus’s leadership. To reduce cognitive dissonance, the disciples altered their beliefs and asserted “that the resurrection (i.e. the visions) confirmed the Messianic status of Jesus, and the belief that Jesus would return at some indeterminate time in the future, the Second Coming.”[48]

There are many other variations of the vision theory. The common denominator of these proposals is that one or more followers of Jesus had a powerful internal, subjective experience of seeing Jesus, and they subsequently convinced others that Jesus had risen bodily from the dead.

Vision, or hallucination, theories are weak for a number of reasons:

●     Grief hallucinations tend to be private and fleeting and do not typically include interactions between the deceased and the living, such as Jesus’s eating with the disciples and disciples touching Jesus.[49] Moreover, a grief hallucination, even though it may be comforting for many persons, is a confirmation that the person is physically dead, even if spiritually alive. If Peter and others interpreted grief hallucinations as physical presence, why are there no other reports in the centuries before Jesus or centuries since in which grieving persons claimed a bodily resurrection of a loved one?[50] Maybe such claims occurred now and then, but nobody took the claimant seriously, so the event never became part of recorded history.

●     Even if hallucinations occurred in a group of people, something that would be very unusual, the hallucinatory experiences are not likely to be identical, and it would be very unlikely that all members of the group hallucinated.

●     The same psychological dynamics, e.g., cognitive dissonance, could have occurred if witnesses had said that they had seen Jesus’s spirit, or ghost, an assertion that would have been more credible to the hearers. Why invent a claim that makes your message harder to sell? A bodily Jesus, then, was not necessary to persuade followers that they should continue his teaching and work. After Socrates’ execution, none of his disciples claimed that he rose from the dead. Instead, they wrote down and disseminated his dialogues.

●     “The wide variety of times and places when Jesus appeared, along with the differing mindsets of the witnesses, is simply a huge obstacle.”[51] 

●     Jesus’s opponents could have produced or directed people to Jesus’s body to refute the claims of a risen Jesus, whether his body was in a tomb or still hanging on the cross being eaten by animals. (According to the gospels, the empty tomb gave rise to the accusation that the disciples had stolen the body.)

●     Given the high frequency of grief hallucinations (about 15%), it seems likely that the ancients, who had much more personal experience with death than we moderns,[52] would have been well aware of visions among grieving people. Today, if somebody claimed that their dead loved one had risen bodily from the dead, nobody would take the person seriously, and most would deem the person to be mentally ill from grief. Why would not people of first-century Israel draw the same conclusion? They may have been immersed in a pre-scientific culture. But they weren’t stupid. And they certainly knew about death first-hand.

●     Other than Jesus and perhaps an occasional psychotic person, no grief hallucinations are interpreted as a bodily visitation, certainly none that history records. Visions of the dead were just that: visions, not material encounters. As N.T. Wright argues, according to Gemini, “the ‘Jewish lens’ of that time did not have a category for a single person rising from the dead in the middle of history. . . . If a first-century Jew saw [or heard about] a ‘grief vision’ of a deceased loved one, their ‘lens’ would tell them they saw a spirit or an angel.”[53]

●     Compared to auditory hallucination, visual hallucinations are “experienced by fewer than 5% of schizophrenia patients.”[54] Among psychotic populations, hallucinations are typically interpreted as real. Therefore, if any of the resurrection witnesses were schizophrenic, it is conceivable that they believed that their grief hallucinations were material realities. Psychotic individuals, however, would not have the mental stability to initiate and sustain a religious movement that would spread through the Roman Empire and beyond. Moreover, psychologically normal people would be reluctant to take at face-value the claims of people they viewed as mentally unbalanced.

●     Among schizophrenics auditory hallucinations occur 19 times more often than visual hallucinations. In normal grieving populations, however, the ratio of auditory to visual is 13.3% vs. 14.0% (in Rees’s study), but the most common experience is “sense of presence” (40% in Rees’s study). Why, then, are there no reports of auditory hallucinations or of the “presence” of an invisible Jesus?  Of course, the skeptic could reply that the Gospel writers would not have recorded such reports. Or perhaps presence hallucinations could have been framed as bodily appearances. On the other hand, because death and grief were so common among the people of the first century, the existence of auditory or presence hallucinations among Jesus’s followers might have made them more skeptical about claims of Jesus’s bodily appearance. These people would know that experiencing a sense of presence or hearing a loved one’s voice is common, and that those few grieving persons who have visions of the dead are either imagining or seeing a spirit. As Wright argues, their cultural conditioning would resist claims of a dead person eating and interacting with the living.

●     Thus, if a disciple saw Jesus, s/he would have most likely thought, “I am seeing his ghost,” not “Jesus has risen bodily from the dead.” Moreover, if Peter said, “I have seen Jesus,” his fellow Jews would most likely think he saw Jesus’s ghost, or saw Jesus’s spirit in Sheol, not Jesus in a physical body. If Peter said, “No, I have seen Jesus in the flesh,” those hearing him would probably react as people would today and conclude that grief had unbalanced his mind.

●     Given a cultural inclination to interpret visions of a dead person as ghosts, it seems unlikely that a few hallucinators could induce in a large number of nonhallucinators a delusional belief in a bodily risen Jesus. The hearers’ expectation would be that apparitions are spiritual and not material, so they would be inclined to be skeptical about  reports of a bodily appearance, even if they might be compassionate toward the grieving persons who now rejoiced because they affirmed a bodily appearance of Jesus.

●     “Why did the hallucinations stop after 40 days? Why didn't they continue to spread to other believers, just as the others had?”[55]

●     Breitenbach and McCoy say about those who didn’t initially recognize Jesus: “If those who saw Jesus in these accounts were hallucinating, then they would not have initially failed to recognize Jesus because hallucinations are projections of one’s mind and are drawn from the content of one’s mind.”[56] Hence, hallucinators would each have projected an image of the Jesus they knew, not an image of somebody they initially took for a stranger. Moreover, the probability is remote that two people, at the same time, would experience the same unlikely kind of hallucination (i.e., see a “stranger,” not the dead person).

●     If Kent’s proposal that the Gospels were a legendary elaboration of standard grief hallucinations were correct, why do the early creeds (referred to in Paul’s letters) and the Gospels (written between 60 and 100 CE) agree on the resurrection account, while the apocrypha (some of which were wildly fanciful) were written in the second and third centuries? Kent’s thesis suggests that the competing narratives should have arisen together several decades after the grief hallucinations, but there was relatively little variation on the main themes when the first accounts were written. 

Hoax Theory

According to Gemini,

The "hoax" or "conspiracy" hypothesis—the idea that the disciples intentionally invented the story of the Resurrection to preserve Jesus’s legacy or advance a political agenda—is one of the oldest skeptical explanations. While it was more common in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is almost universally rejected by modern historians, including most secular and agnostic scholars.[57]

The most obvious argument against the hoax theory is that Jesus’s followers were understandably terrified when the authorities crucified their leader. Inventing a story that he had risen from the dead would surely anger the authorities who had killed him and would subject the conspirators to ridicule and persecution.

The Babylon Bee produced a hilarious satire on the hoax theory. Here is the first minute and a half of the transcript of the video:

0:033 seconds - [Peter] Are we all here? I need 100% participation for this to work. Yeah, everyone's here. All 12, 11, 11 of us.

0:1313 seconds - What's the plan? Well, as you know, Jesus is dead. But stick with me.

0:2121 seconds - Stick with me okay. Stick with me. I have a plan. We are going to steal his body. Okay. Okay.

0:3030 seconds - I'm tracking with you. What's next?

0:3232 seconds - And then we're going to tell the whole world that He rose from the dead. Oh, you know I’m in.

0:4040 seconds - I love it already. Alright, Classic. Classic. Then what?

0:4444 seconds - And then we're all going to get brutally murdered. Oh. Oh,

0:5252 seconds - Wait, wait, wait. Come again? Come again?

0:5353 seconds - Could you go over that last part real, real quick? Oh, what? We get murdered. What's the problem? I like it.

1:011 minute, 1 second - I like it. I mean, don't, don't get me wrong, Pete.

1:041 minute, 4 seconds - I love me a good hoax as much as the next guy. Right? Right? Oh. What's in it for us?

1:111 minute, 11 seconds - Do we all get riches, fame and fortune first, right? Nah nah get this. You're going to be hated (hated)

1:201 minute, 20 seconds - persecuted and reviled for the rest of your life! Oh!

1:281 minute, 28 seconds - Okay, guys, ok fellas. fellas, fellas. Look,

1:321 minute, 32 seconds - I gotta be missing something here, right? Okay? I mean, why on earth would we do this?

John Dominick Crossan: A Metaphorical Resurrection

A religious scholar and former Catholic priest, John Dominick Crossan is known for his work with the Jesus Seminar and the search for the historical Jesus. His claim that Jesus’s divinity is metaphorical has generated much controversy.[58] He portrays Jesus as a magnetic healer and social-justice warrior, whose impact on his followers generated the myth of a bodily resurrection:

The earthly Jesus was not just a thinker with ideas but a rebel with a cause. He was a Jewish peasant with an attitude, and he claimed that his attitude was that of the Jewish God. . . The kingdom of God . . . was about a way of life. . . .There is, then, only one Jesus, the embodied Galilean who lived a life of divine justice in an unjust world, who was officially and legally executed by that world’s accredited representatives, and whose continued empowering presence indicates, for believers, that God is not on the side of injustice–even (or especially) imperial injustice. There are not two Jesuses–one pre-Easter and another post-Easter, one earthly and another heavenly, one with a physical and another with a spiritual body. There is only one Jesus, the historical Jesus who incarnated the Jewish God of justice for a believing community committed to continuing such incarnation ever afterward.[59]

Methodologically, Crossan “identifies a few noncanonical gospels as earlier than and superior to the canonical ones,”[60] a position that the majority of biblical scholars reject. Among these critics is Luke Timothy Johnson, a Catholic and the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. Johnson criticizes the methodology of all historical Jesus scholars, including Crossan:

Just such a pushing of the limits of responsible historiography [the study of historical writing], however, just such an offering of alternatives to the Gospels is what has propelled the entire historical Jesus project, today as in the past. Three aspects of the project are objectionable even when one grants the legitimacy of using history for Jesus. First, history cannot deliver what the historical Jesus project promises, namely a solid version of Jesus other than that of the Gospels. Second, the effort to reconstruct such an alternative Jesus leads to a distortion of the methods that belong to sober historiography. Third, and most sadly, the Jesus offered as an alternative is often a mirror image of the scholar’s own ideals.[61]

Dennis Ingolfsland succinctly captures Crossan’s fundamental assertion:

Jesus was simply an itinerant preacher who taught that the kingdom of God had to do with how the world would be run if God sat on Caesar’s throne. Jesus’ ministry had nothing to do with helping people find God, salvation, or heaven.[62] [T. L. Johnson might say, “if Crossan sat on Caesar’s throne”!]

Ingolfsland also makes multiple specific criticisms of Crossan, including (all quotations are from Ingolfsland):

●     Actual documents on which Crossan relies and dates before 60 AD were actually written in the second century or later.

●     Other sources, also called “first-strata” because of their supposed early dates, include  the Miracles Collection, the Apocalyptic Scenario, and the so-called Cross Gospel. These “are based entirely on speculations."

●     Contrary to Crossan, “the Gospel of the Hebrews clearly teaches the preexistence and incarnation of Jesus, calling Him the first-begotten Son who reigns forever.”

●     Even if one accepts that Crossan’s sources were written earlier than the New Testament Gospels, the portrait of Jesus that emerges from these sources is nothing like the Jesus that Crossan depicts.

Jesus the Charismatic Hypnotist

The American Psychological Association defines hypnosis as a “state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion,”[63] Although hypnosis can increase suggestibility, people have varying baselines of suggestibility, or “hypnotizability.” Approximately 10% are highly hypnotizable.[64] 

Although not widely accepted, some scholars have argued “that Jesus’s charismatic authority and cryptic teachings functioned as a long-term hypnotic induction,”[65] which may have been especially effective with highly hypnotizable followers. Morton Smith in Jesus the Magician (1978), even claims that “Jesus was a practitioner of ‘magical arts’ common in the Greco-Roman world. He suggests that Jesus’s miracles and the way he ‘bound’ his disciples were the result of hypnotic control and secret initiations.”[66] In essence, hypnosis theories suggest that Jesus, perhaps unintentionally, created the conditions for his followers to develop false memories of having seen him in bodily form after his death.

Hypnotic trance or a suggestible state may be induced through a direct or indirect procedure. Hence, Jesus did not have to overtly practice hypnosis to have what might appear to be a hypnotic influence over people, especially if he intuitively chose followers who were high in hypnotizability. His personal charisma might have sufficed.

Psychology Today defines charisma as “a personal quality, evident in the way an individual communicates to others, that makes someone more influential. . . . [and] can be embodied in the way someone speaks, what someone says, and how someone looks when communicating.”[67] The verbal power of charismatic individuals, such as Jesus, is sometimes associated with indirect hypnosis techniques developed by Milton Erickson, techniques that some persuasive people may intuitively use even though they know nothing about Erickson or indirect hypnosis:

1. Indirect language

2. Vagueness

3. Focus on feelings

4. Metaphors and storytelling

5. Milton model language (using “vague, permissive language and patterns that subtly lead the client while maintaining their sense of agency”[68])

Those who associate hypnotic processes with Jesus will point to his use of parables and vague language as means by which he planted suggestions in his hearers or created the illusion of a healing. Stewart[69] makes a number of arguments against this view, including:

●     Jesus often moved large crowds, and mass hypnosis does not work well with crowds.[70]

●     Too many skeptics watched Jesus.

●     How does one explain Paul’s and James’s conversions, which happened after Jesus died?

●     Jesus returned to towns where he had performed healings; if the healings were not lasting, he would have been ridiculed as a fake.

●     How does one account for healings performed by his disciples?

Even if Jesus used indirect hypnotic techniques to suggest that disciples would hallucinate his bodily presence after his death, it does not automatically follow that (a) the post-hypnotic suggestions would last[71] and (b) that the resurrection “witnesses” could convince others that Jesus had risen bodily from the dead, when the cultural expectation was that the spirit, not the body, of a dead person may appear to a grieving loved one.

Furthermore, the power of hypnotic communications is overrated. An exhaustive review of the literature on hypnosis and memory concludes:

A minority of persons (tentatively estimated at under 6%) are at risk for actually altering their memory representation in response to hypnotic pseudo-memory suggestions, and an even smaller minority of subjects have the capacity to hallucinate the false memory in a way that they cannot distinguish from reality. We conclude that the great majority of hypnotized persons, including high-hypnotizable subjects, do not usually mistake hypnotically suggested fantasy scenarios for real events.[72] [Italics in the original.]

Hence, I do not believe hypnosis theories can account for the rapidly spreading and persistent resurrection belief among Jesus’s followers.

Cultic Dynamics

In another essay, I explore the possibility that the resurrection belief might have resulted from cultic dynamics.[73] Control is fundamental to a cult leader. Perhaps Jesus manipulated his followers into believing that he would be the first to be resurrected in the coming Kingdom of God and primed them for hallucinations should he die. Jesus could also have been a well-intentioned leader who was not at all cultic. Perhaps one of the surviving group (Peter? James?) had “cultic talent,” so to speak, and exploited the universal desire for survival after death by concocting and promulgating the “risen Jesus delusion.”

The essay proposes several hypothetical scenarios suggesting that “he is risen” might indeed have been a plausible cultic sales pitch designed to save and spread the Jesus movement. But plausibility is a low bar, so the essay ultimately rejects the cultic explanation for “he is risen”:

Maintaining a cultic level of control over 12 apostles who traveled with their leader is certainly feasible. Maintaining that control over 70+ disciples scattered through Israel and regularly encountering family and friends who would push back against their loved one’s subservience to a cult leader would be extremely difficult. But for Jesus’s successors to maintain a cultic level of control over a far-flung movement would have been virtually impossible. Getting a message from Jerusalem to Rome, a distance of more than 4000 kilometers (about 2400 miles) would have taken at least 100 days on foot, 50 days on horseback, and 25 days by sea. Thus, the Jesus movement was too quickly and too widely dispersed to succeed as a cultic group.

Jesus DID Rise From the Dead

Numerous defenses of the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection exist. For the most part, these defenses accept the basic credibility of the New Testament and devote considerable effort to refuting the naturalistic explanations of the early Christian belief that Jesus rose from the dead. As astonishing as the resurrection belief may seem, these apologists argue that Jesus’s bodily rising from the dead is in fact the most reasonable explanation of the events described in the Gospels and epistles.

This essay will focus on three apologists: Gary Habermas, Peter Kreeft, and N. T. Wright.

Habermas

In The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ,[74] Evangelical scholar Gary Habermas reviews and rebuts pictures of the historical Jesus presented by skeptics. In the 18th and 19th centuries several writers presented what “Albert Schweitzer called ‘the fictitious lives of Jesus.’”[75] These authors contended that Jesus was part of the Essenes, and some speculated, in accordance with the swoon theory, that Essene members nursed Jesus back to health after his crucifixion. Other scholars in the 19th century tried to mythologize the Gospels and denied their basic historicity. They tended to portray Jesus as a good and wise man who was “a great example for living, with the implication that we should pattern our lives after his.”[76]

After the disillusionment of World War I, Karl “Barth’s Neo-orthodoxy replaced Liberalism in the forefront of contemporary theological dialogue. . . Barth and his followers were rather uninterested in the historical Jesus, preferring to divorce evidential concerns from the exercise of faith.”[77] Later, Rudolf Bultmann further de-emphasized evidential foundations for faith and rejected the resurrection on a priori grounds. He believed that faith “should be reinterpreted in terms of its existential significance for present living and decision-making.”[78]

In the 1960s Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jurgen Moltmann reignited interest in “God’s participation in both past and present history,”[79] including the resurrection. More recent scholarship, among theological liberals and conservatives, has attempted to better understand the historical context of Jesus’s life and teachings. Renewed interest, however, has also brought revivals of the swoon theory, the new gnosticism, claims that before his public ministry Jesus traveled to India, Egypt, or Japan, and the notion that Paul corrupted Jesus’s teachings. Habermas criticizes each of these proposals.

Perhaps because of the media attention given to the Jesus Seminar, Habermas devotes a full chapter to the assertions of

. . . this group of 74 scholars from various seminaries and universities [who] met over a period of six years in order to produce a translation (called the Scholar’s Version or SV) of the four canonical Gospels plus the Gospel of Thomas. After discussing more than 1500 purported sayings of Jesus, they cast their votes on each, judging the likelihood that the comment originated with Jesus.[80] 

Habermas credits the Seminar for being “honest enough to state at the outset their aversion to the supernatural,”[81] although he notes that some “Seminar scholars are not unanimous in their dismissal of the supernatural.” [82] He critiques the Seminar members for the paucity of reasons and evidence for their positions: “Appeals to peer pressure (in the name of the current state of modern scholarship) serves as the impetus and those who dare to disagree are sometimes painted as hopelessly backward.”[83]

After critiquing skeptics, Habermas devotes the second part of his book to marshalling evidence and reasons to believe in the Gospel accounts. He examines creeds and facts given by primary sources, archaeological findings, ancient nonChristian sources, and ancient Christian sources outside of the New Testament.

Numerous epistles express ideas, including creeds, that probably originated shortly after Jesus’s death on the cross. These early creeds predate the Gospels and letters. The creeds  offer evidence that the early Christians, contrary to the “evolutionary” views of some skeptics, believed that Jesus was divine.

Habermas presents 12 known historical facts about Jesus: (1) crucifixion, (2) burial, (3) despondent disciples, (4) empty tomb, (5) disciples experience of what they believed was a risen Jesus, (6) transformation of the disciples, (7) death and resurrection was the center of preaching in the early church, (8) message proclaimed in Jerusalem, (9) As a result of this preaching, (10) the church was born and grew, (11) James, brother of Jesus and originally a skeptic, was converted, (12) a few years later, Paul was converted. Habermas adds:

With the exception of the empty tomb, virtually all critical scholars who deal with this issue agree that these are the minimum of known historical facts surrounding this event. As such, any conclusion concerning the historicity of the resurrection should properly account for these facts. . . . Each naturalistic theory is beset by many major objections that invalidate it as a viable hypothesis.[84]

Habermas concludes that the 12 historical facts, combined with the early, oral creeds and the failure of naturalistic alternatives to account for the disciples’ experience of a risen Jesus constitute a solid argument for the historicity of the resurrection.

Archaeological evidence provides additional insight into Jesus’s life and environment and supports aspects of the New Testament account. These include the census in Luke 2:1-5, Quirinius’s being governor of Syria, the skeletal remains of a crucifixion victim (nail through foot and broken leg bones are consistent with the crucifixion account in the Gospels), the existence of the pools of Bethesda and Siloam, coins minted to honor Pilate’s rule, and the Nazareth Decree (AD 41-54) against unsealing tombs, which scholars believe may have been issued because of reports of the resurrection and Jewish claims that Jesus’s disciples had stolen his body.

Habermas reviews 17 ancient nonChristian sources pertinent to the historical Jesus and early Christianity. Among these sources are Josephus’s Antiquities, the Annals and Histories of Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Emperors Trajan and Hadrian, the Talmud, the Gnostic Gospel of Truth, The Apocryphon of John, and The Gospel of Thomas. Among the New Testament assertions reported by the nonChristian sources are: Jesus’s ministry was centered in Palestine; Jesus was known as a virtuous and wise man; he was reported to have performed miracles; he made prophecies that were fulfilled; he had Jewish and Gentile disciples; he was called the Son of God; he was worshipped as deity; he was the Messiah.

Ancient Christian sources that were not part of the New Testament are reviewed because they illuminate the early history of Christianity. Among the sources and approximate dates of relevant writings are Clement of Rome (90-125), Ignatius (110-115 - a disciple of the Apostle John), the philosopher Quadratus (125), Barnabas (126-155), and Justin Martyr (150). The primary weakness of these sources is that they rely on the New Testament, although some, like Ignatius, also had access to first- or second-generation testimony. “Additionally, these writers were frequently careful to cite evidence for their assertions. Clement and Ignatius referred to the resurrection as the basis for Christian truth. Quadratus backed his testimony with eyewitness testimony concerning Jesus’ miracles. Justin referred to miracles and fulfilled prophecy as evidence.”[85]

Habermas contends that he has made a compelling, historical case for the historicity of the resurrection.

Of our 45 sources, 18 specifically record the resurrection, while an additional 11 more provide relevant facts surrounding this occurrence. Even if we were only to use the known facts that are accepted as historical by critical scholars, we still arrive at three major categories of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.[86]

The three categories are: (1) naturalistic theories for the resurrection belief fail; (2) “accepted historical facts provide at least nine historical evidences for the resurrection”[87]; (3) even the four minimal historical facts alone refute the naturalistic theories and support the resurrection.

Analysis of Habermas

Habermas provides a detailed and compelling argument for the historicity of the resurrection. His argument will probably strengthen the faith of committed Christians, and it may move those open to that faith in the direction of commitment. But I doubt that the argument will change the minds of those with a hardened skepticism, though it may “soften” some.

Providing historical evidence about the details of Jesus’s life, his crucifixion, and his disciples’ belief that he rose from the dead does not demonstrate that resurrection actually happened.

Proof of the resurrection through the methodology of history is impossible. A sufficiently clever and creative skeptic can always come up with another naturalistic theory to account for the disciples' belief that Jesus rose from the dead. Here is one explanation off the top of my head:

A woman goes to the tomb. There are multiple tombs in the area, and they look much the same. Unknowingly, she goes to the wrong tomb, an empty tomb that remains unused. She returns to the disciples and excitedly exclaims, “Jesus’s tomb is empty!” One or more of the disciples have an epiphany: they now understand what Jesus meant when he said that he would die and “after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31). Their despair turns to elation. “Jesus is risen!” In their excited state, some follow the woman back to the empty tomb. Their faith is strengthened. They tell others, who tell more of Jesus’s followers. The electrifying rumor spreads and is embellished. A few people claim to have seen Jesus (perhaps grief hallucinations). A few others, desiring even more attention, say they talked and ate with Jesus. Emotional reports of these appearances continue to circulate. They get distorted more and more. Details are made up to make the narrative more credible. By the time somebody writes things down years later, his interviewees have developed a fanciful resurrection narrative to support the delusion that Jesus rose from the dead, a delusion that is, nevertheless, beneficial because it helps to spread Jesus’s message of love and brotherhood.

I don’t claim that this quickly produced fiction is an actual “explanation.” I provide it merely to demonstrate that naturalistic theories of the resurrection are like weeds. Pull out one, and another will grow.

Kreeft

Boston College philosophy professor, Peter Kreeft, posted on his website an article entitled, “Evidence for the Resurrection of Christ.”[88] Kreeft makes a logical argument that presupposes “The existence of the New Testament texts as we have them, and the existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian religion as we find it today.”[89] Kreeft asks which of these five possible theories can account for the data that we have:

1. Jesus died. Jesus rose. [ Christianity ]

2. Jesus died. Jesus didn't rise—apostles deceived. [Hallucination]

3. Jesus died. Jesus didn't rise—apostles myth-makers [ Myth ]

4. Jesus died. Jesus didn't rise—apostles deceivers [ Conspiracy ]

5. Jesus didn't die. [ Swoon ][90]

Refuting theories 2-5, according to Kreeft, proves theory 1 because these are the only possible theories.

Kreeft uses 9 pieces of evidence to refute the swoon theory, among which is the compelling proposition: “A half-dead, staggering sick man who has just had a narrow escape is not worshiped fearlessly as divine lord and conqueror of death.”[91]

Kreeft makes 7 points to argue against a devious conspiracy concocted by the Apostles, the most telling of which is that they were martyred for their beliefs. Liars do not die for their lie.

Kreeft makes 13 arguments against hallucination theories. His argument assumes that the story told in the New Testament is accurate in general and in most details. For example, argument 3 rests upon Paul’s statement that the risen Jesus appeared to more than 500 (1 Corinthians 15:6). Unless one presumes the infallibility of the New Testament regarding details, it is possible that Paul repeated what was nothing more than a rumor about a large group appearance.

Kreeft makes another argument against hallucinations: “Not only did the disciples not expect this, they didn't even believe it at first—neither Peter, nor the women, nor Thomas, nor the eleven. They thought he was a ghost; he had to eat something to prove he was not (Lk 24:36-43).”[92] Again, this is a compelling argument if one accepts that the text depicts what actually happened. Maybe, as Ehrman suggests, proponents of the core misconception, Jesus is risen, embellished the narrative over time to counter skeptics’ attacks. Because those who are skeptical about the resurrection are likely to be skeptical about the veracity of Biblical details, Kreeft’s argument, which presupposes “The existence of the New Testament texts as we have them,” has weight only for those who already believe.

Lastly, Kreeft makes six arguments to critique the myth theory. Kreeft begins his rebuttal by saying: “The style of the Gospels is radically and clearly different from the style of all the myths.”[93] Over the years, I’ve read about so many myths (most of which bore me) that the concept “myth” generates an annoying fog in my mind. In part, this is because of the definitional haziness surrounding terms related to “myth,” i.e., legends, epics, sagas, folk tales, fables, fairy tales, and parables.[94]

So, I cannot accept Kreeft’s statement without some exploration of what a myth is. Britannica defines myth as

a symbolic narrative, usually of unknown origin and at least partly traditional, that ostensibly relates actual events and that is especially associated with religious belief. It is distinguished from symbolic behavior (cult, ritual) and symbolic places or objects (temples, icons). Myths are specific accounts of gods or superhuman beings involved in extraordinary events or circumstances in a time that is unspecified but which is understood as existing apart from ordinary human experience.[95]

Given this definition, Kreeft is correct. The New Testament does not qualify as myth because the time of the resurrection is not only specified, the narrative cites living witnesses to the event, which formed part of their human experience. Some  might counter, however, that the resurrection narrative within the New Testament has the form of myth. Seemingly supporting this notion, Britannica later says: “Every myth presents itself as an authoritative, factual account, no matter how much the narrated events are at variance with natural law or ordinary experience.”[96] [emphasis added].

However, Britannica later says that myths, which exist in every culture, “reflect, express, and explore the people’s self-image.”[97] The resurrection story is about an event that grates against the expectations of Roman and Jewish cultures. It challenges, rather than reflects, “the people’s self-image.” So again, Kreeft is correct. Why, then, do some contend that the New Testament is myth?

“Because myths narrate fantastic events with no attempt at proof, it is sometimes assumed that they are simply stories with no factual basis, and the word has become a synonym for falsehood or, at best, misconception.”[98] Thus, for some, mythologizing the Gospels may be a way of saying, “I don’t believe that nonsense.”

Gemini says that the gospels-as-myth idea “splits into two fundamentally different intellectual traditions:”[99] (1) Jesus never existed, (2) “the Gospels belong to an ancient genre where historical facts were heavily embellished or structured around theological "myths" and legendary motifs.”[100] Tradition (1) is considered fringe today, even by skeptics. Regarding tradition (2), Gemini says that 

mainstream secular or agnostic scholars—most notably Bart Ehrman (Did Jesus Exist?) and Maurice Casey—have written extensive refutations of the Christ Myth Theory. They argue that the Gospels, while containing legendary embellishments, theological evolution, and ideological tailoring, cannot be dismissed as pure myth. The presence of multiple independent early traditions (Mark, Q, Paul, John), the distinctively first-century Aramaic/Jewish context embedded in the Greek text, and the embarrassment of a crucified Messiah all point decisively to a historical individual at the source of the movement.[101]

In his critique of the myth idea, Kreeft gives  a detailed summary and rearrangement of William Lane Craig’s argument in Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection. Kreeft describes 19 of Craig’s points. Craig and Kreeft make clear that the Gospels are respectable historical documents, not mythical fictions, and that Jesus’s followers clearly believed in the resurrection.  I do not think, however, that their argument demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead.

Wright

Like Habermas and Kreeft, N. T. Wright argues that, though proof is impossible, there are sound historical reasons to believe that the resurrection actually happened. As noted earlier, Wright showed that claims of an individual’s being raised from the dead would have met with skepticism or outrage in both Roman and Jewish cultures. Indeed, in the Roman-Hellenistic world, resurrection was so alien that “not even in myth was it permitted.”[102] In the Jewish world, “What nobody expected the Messiah to do was to die at the hands of the pagans instead of defeating them.”[103] Thus, sustaining a belief in the resurrection of a purported messiah had to overcome powerful cultural expectations.

Wright’s argument for the truth of the resurrection can be summarized as follows:

1. The world of second-Temple Judaism supplied the concept of resurrection, but the striking and consistent Christian mutations within Jewish resurrection belief rule out any possibility that the belief could have generated spontaneously from within its Jewish context. . .

2. Neither the empty tomb by itself, however, nor the appearances by themselves, could have generated the early Christian belief. The empty tomb alone would be a puzzle and a tragedy. Sightings of an apparently alive Jesus, by themselves, would have been classified as visions or hallucinations. . .

3. . . . an empty tomb and appearances of a living Jesus, taken together, would have presented a powerful reason for the emergence of the belief.

4. The meaning of resurrection within second-Temple Judaism makes it impossible to conceive of this reshaped resurrection belief emerging without it being known that a body had disappeared, and that the person had been discovered to be thoroughly alive again.

5. The other explanations sometimes offered for the emergence of the belief do not possess the same explanatory power.

6. It is therefore historically highly probable that Jesus’ tomb was indeed empty on the third day after his execution, and that the disciples did indeed encounter him giving every appearance of being well and truly alive.

7. This leaves us with the last and most important question: what explanation can be given for these two phenomena? Is there an alternative to the explanation given by the early Christians themselves?[104]

Wright concludes:

Why did Christianity even begin, let alone continue, as a messianic movement, when its Messiah so obviously not only did not do what a Messiah was supposed to do but suffered a fate which ought to have showed conclusively that he could not possibly have been Israel’s anointed?  Why did this group of first-century Jews, who had cherished messianic hopes and focused them on Jesus of Nazareth, not only continue to believe that he was the Messiah despite his execution, but actively announce him as such in the pagan as well as the Jewish world, cheerfully redrawing the picture of messiahship around him but refusing to abandon it?  Their answer, consistently throughout the evidence we possess, was that Jesus, following his execution on a charge of being a would-be Messiah, had been raised from the dead.[105]

Wright’s scholarship is impressive. His argument that both the empty tomb and the appearances are necessary conditions for the resurrection belief to arise is persuasive. However, as with other apologists, his argument presupposes a reasonably high level of credibility for the New Testament.

Are New Testament Accounts Credible?

The credibility attributed to the New Testament correlates with views on the resurrection. Some, like Jack Kent, view the Gospel as an attempt by the early church to counter its chief competitor, gnosticism, by reframing a psychological event (grief hallucinations) into a physical event (resurrection). Other skeptics, like Ehrman, accept the Gospels and Epistles as fallible historical documents that describe what people believed, not necessarily what happened. Christian scholars, like Wright, argue for the credibility of the New Testament on historical grounds because, among other reasons, the evidence for New Testament events is much greater than that for other events from antiquity.

The Catholic Church’s view on New Testament credibility is probably representative of most Christian denominations. Catholic teaching says that the Gospels faithfully tell us what Jesus did and taught, although narrative details are not “transcripts” of what happened and was said, so they may reflect varying levels of historical certainty. For example, the accounts of the beatitudes in Matthew and Luke may recapitulate two related sermons at different times and places or may frame the same event in different ways that are nonetheless faithful to the sermon’s ethical teaching.[106]

Even though the Gospels were not written until several decades after Jesus’s crucifixion, oral narratives were passed on before anything was written. As noted earlier, several epistles suggest that oral creedal statements were recited soon after the crucifixion.

Ehrman maintains that oral histories are not very reliable,[107] that they are a “telephone game” in which each participant is likely to modify the message in some way. Gemini’s summary of oral history methodology, however, indicates that the oral history regarding Jesus’s life and teachings may have been more reliable than Ehrman suggests:

Middle Eastern studies scholar Kenneth Bailey provided a "middle way" that is widely cited by modern methodologists. He observed how modern Middle Eastern villagers preserve important communal stories. The Argument: While there is no "official" memorization, the community sits in a circle and listens to the story. If the teller changes a significant detail, the elders immediately correct them. Reliability: This allows for "flexibility in the non-essentials" (the wording might change) but "rigidity in the essentials" (the point of the story remains intact). It suggests the Gospels are substantively reliable even if they aren't verbatim transcripts.[108]

Bailey provides several compelling anecdotes to illustrate the persistence and accuracy of memory as he has observed it during more than 30 years living in the Mideast. Here are two:

In his famous autobiography, Taha Hussein of Egypt describes his memorization of the Qur’an as a young boy of eight (around the turn of the century), and with it the learning of Alfiyat Ibn Malik.21 The latter work is a collection of 1,000 couplets of Arabic verse, each of which defines some aspect of Arabic grammar. It was my privilege to study in Cairo in the fifties under a venerable Islamic scholar, Shaykh Sayyed, who had both of these works fully committed to memory with total recall at the age of 75. I would bring to him a couplet of Arabic poetry and ask him if it was in the Qur’an. He would close his eyes for a few seconds, mentally flip through the entire Qur’an, and then give his answer. Similarly, any point of grammar evoked the quotation of one of the 1,000 couplets of Ibn Malik. Shaykh Sayyed is the inheritor of an attitude and a methodology that is at least as old as Plato.[109]

Turning to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, his Grace George Salibo, Syriac Orthodox Bishop of Mount Lebanon, has described to me the tradition of the great St Ephrem the Syrian. In the late second century Bardaisan, the poet and heretic, disseminated his views not by authoring heretical texts but by composing stanza after stanza of seven-syllable-per-line Syriac hymns. Nearly 200 years after his death his material was still firmly entrenched in the Syriac community. St Ephrem in the late fourth century was anxious to counteract the heresies of Bardaisan. But he could only fight fire with fire. To compose a book disputing Bardaisan would have been pointless—who would read it? So the great saint himself composed stanza after stanza of poetry using the same seven-syllable-per-line metre and poured it, as it were, into the same lake. Because of the quality of the poetry and the cultural receptivity to the metre, his new orthodox hymns were received by the grass-roots community and the hymns moved by themselves all across the Syriac Church, displacing Bardaisan’s heresy. In this theological battle of the giants no writing was involved. So today, at the ‘Atshani Syrian Orthodox seminary in Lebanon, the students converse only in fourth-century Syriac and, in that same classical language, sing St Ephrem’s hymns by the hour. Books? There are no books—who needs them?[110]

If oral transmission were as unreliable as Ehrman and other critics contend, and if the Gospels were largely fictional, why, as noted earlier, was there so much overlap and consistency about the central issues (e.g., resurrection; Jesus’s teachings) among the four Gospels written in the last half of the first century? Virtually all of the apocryphal gospels, some of which were quite fanciful, were written in the second century or later. Why did apocryphal gospels not appear earlier?

Gemini says that Oxford classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White, in his work Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament,

examined the rate at which legends accumulated around figures like Alexander the Great and in the writings of Herodotus. The Findings: Sherwin-White argued that even two full generations (roughly 60–70 years) is too short a span for the "mythical tendency" to prevail over the "hard historical core" of an event. The Logic: As long as eyewitnesses or the children of eyewitnesses are alive, they act as a "check" on the narrative.[111]

Skeptics, of course, reply to this argument. According to Gemini, they “point to modern ‘urban legends’ or political myths that can take root in as little as 10 to 20 years.”[112] Recalling my childhood, I asked Gemini about the growth of legends surrounding Davy Crockett (I can still sing the song that the TV shows used!).[113] Gemini replied that Crockett was already a legendary figure when he was in congress. After he died in 1836, popular almanacs expanded the legend, which was revived in the mid-1950s by a Disney mini-series and the song that I remember.

Using Davy Crockett or urban legends to argue against Sherwin-White, however, is not persuasive. Writing about the legend of Davy Crockett after he died put money in many pockets. And modern urban legends originate in a context of rapid transportation and virtually instantaneous communication. The comparatively slow-moving world of the Roman Empire, which Sherwin-White studied, was very different. Moreover, as Bailey suggests, we who live in literate societies dependent upon technology underestimate the accuracy and durability of oral stories that were vital to largely illiterate communities in antiquity. I used to remember phone numbers, for example, before I had a cell phone that stores the numbers for me. Today, I don’t even remember my children’s phone numbers.

If the oral transmission of event narratives were reasonably reliable, but not completely reliable, then we should not be surprised to find gospels written several decades after the event that agree on the main points but may diverge on minor details (such as who went to the tomb). Gospel writers might have interviewed first- or second-generation witnesses whose memories, understandably, may have varied about specifics, e.g., which persons saw the risen Jesus, but converged on the main points.

Nor should we be surprised to find epistles that allude to creedal propositions that significantly pre-date the epistle. An often overlooked variable is the financial cost of writing: “Papyrus, ink, and the hiring of a professional scribe were incredibly expensive. Academics have calculated that dictating and copying a letter as long as Romans or 1 Corinthians would cost the modern equivalent of thousands of dollars.”[114] Keep in mind that Paul was a tent maker, not a wealthy man. Most of his time was spent founding churches, teaching, and responding to disputes. Moreover, he may have written earlier letters that are lost to history.

Blomberg tries to dampen skepticism by summarizing the extra-biblical references that support key assertions in the Gospels:

At least a dozen extra-biblical references in non-Christian (Jewish, Greek, and Roman) sources in the earliest centuries of the Christian era (Josephus, Thallus, Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny, Mara ben Serapion, Lucian, and several Talmudic tractates) confirm the main contours of the Synoptics: Jesus’ birth out of wedlock, his intersection with the ministry of John the Baptist, the existence of his brother James, his gathering of disciples, including five who are named, his running afoul of the Jewish leaders in interpretations of the law, his working “wondrous feats,” and his being deemed “a sorcerer who led Israel astray.” We learn that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate (and thus between A.D. 26-36), that his followers believed he was the Messiah and believed that he had been resurrected, and that his death did not put an end to those beliefs. Instead, his followers rather quickly began meeting together and “singing hymns to him as if he were a god.[115]

About the New Testament manuscripts, Stezer says:

. . . we have over 5,700 Greek manuscripts representing all, or part, of the NT [New Testament]. By examining these manuscripts, over 99 percent of the original text can be reconstructed beyond reasonable doubt. We also discover that no Christian doctrine or ethic depends solely on one of the doubted texts. These facts do not prove that the NT is true, but it does mean we know what the original writers wrote.. . . Even critical scholars who doubt the traditional attributions of authorship agree that these five books were written by followers of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which still puts them in a good place to tell the stories accurately. . . . these five books were almost certainly written in the first century, within sixty to seventy years of Jesus’ death (most likely in a.d. 30).[116]

In contrast to the New Testament, there are: 7 manuscripts, all after 900 AD, on the work of Plato (427-347 BC); 10 manuscripts, all after 900 AD, on Caesar’s Gallic Wars (100-44 BC); and 20 manuscripts, all after 1100 AD, of Tacitus’s Annals (100 AD).[117] Although the vast majority of New Testament manuscripts are from the Middle Ages or later, about 140 New Testament papyri exist from the second to seventh centuries and about 320 parchment/velum manuscripts exist from the 3rd to 10th centuries.[118]

If one examines New Testament texts from different centuries, one finds that “of the hundreds of thousands of differences across those 5,700 manuscripts, about 99% are spelling errors, word order differences, or synonyms that don't change the meaning.”[119] This suggests that the copyists were quite competent over the centuries. “When we compare a 2nd-century fragment to a 10th-century manuscript, the text is often identical in over 90% of its content.”[120] Some scholars argue that “the early Church functioned like a Jewish scribal school. In these cultures, memorization and transcription were highly disciplined.”[121] Thus, though we do not have the original Gospels written in the last half of the first century, we can reasonably assume that the discipline of copyists would make it likely that these lost originals did not vary substantially from the early manuscripts in our possession.

The skeptic, of course, can reply that reliable copying does not mean that the original was accurate. Hence, skeptics and believers can debate endlessly the accuracy of the New Testament, even in its fundamental claims. Is it possible to determine who is right?

Who is Right?

I suspect that those who inquire into the resurrection’s historicity are predisposed toward either “it did happen” or “it didn’t happen.” Since that predisposition may vary from weak to strong, a few for whom it is weak may change their opinions based upon what they learn, while some may gain or lose confidence in the opinion that pre-dated the inquiry. Some probably wish the resurrection did happen, but think it didn’t. A few may be persistent agnostics, perpetually balanced on the knife edge between “yes” and “no.” But even they probably harbor a hidden hope for one or the other conclusion.

Why would anyone want the resurrection to be false? Because if Jesus did rise from the dead, then the case is much stronger for a God who cares about us, expects things from us, and, perhaps most importantly, says that our actions and attitudes in this life affect what happens to us in an afterlife. Some people may look at this prospect and conclude that they would rather have oblivion follow death than “gamble” with an afterlife. They may think: “Heads I  go to Heaven, tails I go to Hell. If oblivion is the final outcome, however, I lose the possibility of Heaven, but I don’t have to worry about Hell. Hence, I can do what I want in this life! Therefore, I prefer that the resurrection be a falsehood. Life on my terms followed by oblivion is good enough for me.”

Conversely, some might want the resurrection to be true because, by relating to a merciful Jesus, they feel the joy of forgiveness more intensely than the fear of judgment. “Jesus saves” is their slogan. The Jesus Prayer is their lodestone (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”). For them, the coin is loaded and, when tossed, biased toward landing on “heads I go to Heaven.”

These two predispositions bring to mind a famous quotation from C. S. Lewis:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.[122]

On the resurrection question I identify with the “yes” group, those who look to God and say, to be more accurate than the Lewis quote, “I want to do thy will but know I’ll fail repeatedly,” and then they say the Jesus prayer. Although overall, I’m a “yes,” there is a part of me that wouldn’t be disappointed if “no” were correct, and there is no God or afterlife. Oblivion does not judge: nothing gained, but nothing lost–and nothing put at risk.

So, why do I think the “yes” group is right?

First of all, I’ve discovered that the Gospels are much more credible as historical sources than I once thought. The confirmation of key Gospel events in nonChristian sources, as well as the textual consistency of thousands of New Testament manuscripts decisively rebut the notion that the New Testament accounts are mere myths or works of fiction. Although the Gospels cannot be treated as “transcripts” of who said what to whom when, they are nonetheless reliable reports of major events and Jesus’s fundamental messages. Even skeptics like Bart Ehrman, who does not believe in the historicity of the resurrection, accept the basic reliability of the New Testament texts, including the belief that Jesus rose from the dead.

Skepticism like Ehrman’s is resilient because the resurrection cannot be proven through historical evidence. Thus, skeptics can speculate endlessly on how the presumably false belief in resurrection came about. Their naturalistic explanations are, as I said earlier, like weeds. Pull one and another grows. With a bit of imagination, every new fact that one learns can provide fuel for skepticism. For example, when I learned about Judaism’s failed Messiahs, it occurred to my skeptical side that the young Jesus probably heard about Simon of Peraea (c. 4 BCE), Athronges the Shepherd (c. 4–2 BCE), Judas, son of Hezekiah (c. 4 BCE), and especially Judas the Galilean (6 CE). Perhaps Jesus looked at all the death that rebellion brought and formulated his message of peace and brotherhood as a nonviolent way to bring in the New Kingdom. The cynical skeptic could further speculate that the young Jesus realized that his message of nonviolence might bring him the attention and glory that the dead rebels once had, and that he craved, but without the risk of mass slaughter.

Habermas and Wright counter the wide field of skeptical rabbit holes, such as the bit of speculation just proposed, by laying out the historical evidence and demonstrating how innovative Christianity was for Judaism as well as the Roman world. Wright in particular makes a forceful case that the combination of the empty tomb and Jesus’s appearances, given the overall reliability of the Gospels, is a strong indicator that the resurrection actually happened. Christianity was too out of synch with its environment to have taken hold without something transcendent helping out.

Moreover, the alternative explanations for the resurrection are not persuasive. After reviewing Ehrman’s process theory, the swoon theory, various hallucination theories, the hoax theory, Crossan’s metaphorical resurrection, charisma, hypnotism, and cultic dynamics, I remain unimpressed. Kreeft’s philosophical analysis bolsters my opinion. Attempts to explain away the resurrection do not hold water.

Nevertheless, because we cannot go back in time to find out what actually happened after Jesus died, creative skeptics can continue to invent new explanations that may seem plausible until they are refuted. Plausibility, however, is not a demanding standard.

There are other reasons that incline me to say “yes” to the resurrection question, reasons that are not discussed in this essay because it isn’t feasible for me to present these reasons with even a modest level of scholarship. I will, however, mention them briefly.

First, I am impressed by the debates among very intelligent and learned men during the first few centuries of the church. Each of the doctrinal deviations that I briefly describe above were  products of thoughtful deliberations, as were the refutations of each deviation. Although my knowledge of these debates is far from deep, I have read enough to be impressed by the intelligence and reasoning of the early Christian apologists.

Second, the survival and spread of Christianity over two millennia seems highly improbable.  Christianity is premised upon the outrageous claim that a man died and rose from the dead. As Wright demonstrates, this fundamental assertion of Christianity defies sociological, psychological, and historical theories of why belief in Jesus’s resurrection arose and, more strangely, why it spread. Supernatural explanations, then, inevitably come to mind.

Third, the stories of martyrs, holy people, and miracles point to a transcendent dimension. I once dismissed these stories as myths or lies. Certainly some stories are falsehoods. The Spanish Inquisition even had a term for spiritual frauds: “inventing the sacred.”[123] However, scholarly works like Carlos Eire’s They flew: A History of the Impossible[124] make me question my former dismissive skepticism. That skepticism is further weakened when I consider the credibility of the New Testament, the willingness of Jesus’s followers to be persecuted and to die, and the speed with which a new religion that was incompatible with Roman and Jewish beliefs could spread throughout a hostile empire.

My reasons for aligning with the “yes” group are not likely to convince people whose presuppositions incline them to reject the reality of the resurrection. Ultimately, answering the resurrection question is a judgment call that emanates from deep inside a person. Proof is not possible, at least in any practical sense. My judgment call is “yes,” but a “yes” with doubts. That, however, is the essence of a judgment call. And when proof is not possible, judgment is all we have. So, we place our metaphysical bet and hope for the best.

Endnotes

[1] Gemini inquiry: Do historians attribute the fall of the Roman Republic at least in part to a decrease in the average Roman's faith in Rome? 4/9/26. Gemini’s sources included: Mike Duncan, The Storm Before the Storm: A modern narrative history focusing specifically on the generation before Caesar and how Roman norms dissolved.  Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome: Explores how the "identity" of being Roman changed as the Republic expanded. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: While dated, it remains the foundational text for the "loss of virtue" argument.

[2] Gemini inquiry: Do historians have a reliable sense of the prevalence of these “Christian-adjacent” philosophies vs. the prevalence of more traditional Roman polytheism and vs. the prevalence of religious agnosticism or atheism in the Roman Empire during Jesus’s life and the decades that followed? 4/6/26. Gemini says: “Historians rely on three main ‘data streams’ to reconstruct these numbers:

The ‘Library of Herculaneum’: The volcanic eruption of Vesuvius (79 CE) preserved an entire library of Epicurean texts, showing exactly how widespread these ‘secular’ ethical ideas were in a typical resort town. Inscriptions and Papyri: Funerary inscriptions often reveal personal beliefs. . . . Literary Satire: Writers like Juvenal and Lucian mocked the ‘dying out’ of old-fashioned belief in the gods among the urban elite, suggesting a high degree of cynicism and ‘adjacent’ thinking in Rome.”

[3] Ehrman, B. (2014). How Jesus became God: The exaltation of a Jewish preacher from Galilee. New York: HarperOne, p. 358.

[4] Gemini inquiry: Would you like to see how these different views—the "shadowy shade" vs. the "eternal soul"—show up in the tombstone inscriptions (epitaphs) of the time to see what people actually said about their own deaths? “Yes.” Gemini’s sources included "Roman Funerary Inscriptions" (The British Museum): An online gallery of translated tombstones showing the diversity of Roman belief. View at BritishMuseum.org. Lattimore, Richmond. (1942). Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs. University of Illinois Press. (The foundational academic study of what ancient tombstones tell us about the afterlife). "Common Epitaphs in the Roman World" (The Latin Library): A collection of the most frequent Latin phrases found on graves. Read at TheLatinLibrary.com.

[5] Gemini inquiry: Since Lattimore's work focuses so heavily on the linguistic formulas people used to describe the end of life, would you like to see a comparison of a few specific pagan vs. early Christian epitaphs to see how these "themes" actually changed on the stone? “Yes.” 4/8/26. Sources: Search at EDR-edr.it,  Explore at Catacombe.roma.it.

[6] Wright, N. T. (2003). The resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, p. 82.

[7] Wright, 2003, p. xix.

[8] Wright, 2003, p. 205.

[9] Wright, 2003, p. xix.

[10] Wright, 2003, p. 205.

[11] This quotation and the other information on failed messiahs comes from a Gemini inquiry: What do historians know about Jews acclaimed as messiahs, but not Jesus, i.e., "failed messiahs"? N. T. Wright mentions two briefly. 4/10/26. Among Gemini’s sources: CDAMM (Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements): Provides a comprehensive list of 1st-century Jewish messiahs.

[12] Gemini inquiry: What are the elements of the Christology that Catholics, Orthodox, and most Protestant denominations accept? 4/15/26. Gemini’s sources include: First Council of Nicaea (325 AD); Council of Chalcedon (451 AD); Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Trinity (History and Philosophy);  Britannica – Historical Overview of the Nicene Creed. 

[13] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sabellianism.

[14] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Arianism.

[15] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Docetism.

[16] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Docetism.

[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionites.

[18] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nazarene.

[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollinarism

[20] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nestorianism

[21] https://www.britannica.com/topic/monophysite.

[22] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Monothelite.

[23] https://www.britannica.com/topic/miaphysitism.

[24] Fudge, G. (2025). A statistical analysis of the hallucination hypothesis used to explain the resurrection of Christ. Religions, 16(4), 519. Section  2. Reported Resurrection Appearances in the New Testament.

[25] Ehrman, pp. 132-133.

[26] Vision theory of Jesus' appearances. Wikipedia. Section: Exaltation of Jesus. Original source: Ehrman, B. (2014). How Jesus became God: The exaltation of a Jewish preacher from Galilee. New York: HarperOne, pp. 101-102.

[27] Ehrman, p. 134.

[28] Blomberg, C. (no date). The reliability of the New Testament. The Gospel Coalition.

[29] Ehrman, p. 354.

[30] Ehrman, p. 92.

[31] Gemini inquiry: Bart Ehrman says that Jesus only claimed to be divine in John, not in Mark, Matthew, or Luke. How do Christian theologians respond to that claim? Please provide sources. 4/9/26. Multiple sources.

[32] Gemini inquiry: You say: "Hurtado found that within the first few years, Christians were already praying to Jesus, baptizing in his name, and singing hymns to him." Could you please give me the source of this and, if possible, a quote with citation information. 5/20/26. Source: Hurtado, L. W. (2003). Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in earliest Christianity. W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

[33] Gemini inquiry: Are there not other synoptic gospel verses that argue for Jesus as god, e.g., I and the Father are one? 4/16/26. Bible sources.

[34] Gemini inquiry: Bart Ehrman doubts the tomb story of Jesus, in part because crucified criminals were left for the “birds.” Is there any historical evidence of the crucified being allowed a burial, such as the Bible says happened to Jesus? Please provide sources. 4/10/26. Multiple sources.

[35] Holland, T. (2019). Dominion: How the Christian revolution remade the world. New York: Basic Books, p. 5.

[36] The Biblical Archaeology Society – "A Crucified Man from Giv'at ha-Mivtar": A detailed report on the discovery of Jehohanan's remains.

[37] Wright, N. T. (1998). Christian origins and the resurrection of Jesus: The resurrection of Jesus as a historical problem. Sewanee Theological Review 41(2). Section: Conclusion: The Questions and the Options.

[38] Stollznow, K. (2023, Nov. 30). Grief hallucinations. Psychology Today.

[39] Rees, W. D. (1971). The hallucinations of widowhood. British Medical Journal, 4, 37-41, p. 37.

[40] Rees, p. 38.

[41] Smith, S. (2024). Appearances of the risen Jesus and the modern study of bereavement hallucinations. Qeios..

[42] Two in five Americans say ghosts exist — and one in five say they've encountered one. (2021, October 21). YouGov.

[43] Hoffman, R. J. (Ed.). (1987). Celsus on the True doctrine: A discourse against the Christians. New York/Oxford: OUP, p. 60. Quoted in Wright, N. T. (2003). The resurrection of the son of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, p. 521.

[44] Vision theory of Jesus' appearances. Wikipedia.. Section: Call to Missionary Activity. Original source: Ehrman, Bart (5 October 2012). "Gerd Lüdemann on the Resurrection of Jesus". The Bart Ehrman Blog. Retrieved 4 March 2024.

[45] Gemini inquiry: Please tell me more about Jack Kent’s Bereavement Vision theory (The Psychological Origins of the Resurrection. 1999). 4/30/26. Multiple sources.

[46] Gemini inquiry: Please tell me more about Michael Goulder's collective hallucination theory. 4/30/26. Multiple sources.

[47] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun.

[48] Vision theory of Jesus' appearances. Wikipedia. Section: Cognitive Dissonance Reduction. Multiple sources.

[49] Gemini Inquiry: Are there online sources that provide quantitative details on the nature, duration, and frequency of bereavement hallucinations? 4/29/26. Key Gemini sources: Steffen, E., & Coyle, A. (2010). Can 'sense of presence' experiences in bereavement be conceptualised as spiritual phenomena? Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 13(3), 273–291. Hayes J, Leudar I. (2016, June). Experiences of continued presence: On the practical consequences of 'hallucinations' in bereavement. Psychol Psychother; 89(2):194-210. doi: 10.1111/papt.12067.

[50] Gemini inquiry: If Peter and others interpreted grief hallucinations as physical presence, why are there no other reports throughout history in which grieving persons claimed a bodily resurrection of a loved one? Am I correct about no other reports of bodily resurrection? If not, what reports exist. Please provide sources. 5/13/26. Multiple sources.

[51] Habermas, G. R. (2001). Explaining away Jesus' resurrection: The recent revival of hallucination theories. Christian Research Journal, 23(4).

[52] The Biblical Archaeology Society – "A Crucified Man from Giv'at ha-Mivtar": A detailed report on the discovery of Jehohanan's remains – contains the following compelling paragraph: “An osteological examination showed that five of the 17 people whose bones were collected in the ossuaries died before reaching the age of seven. By age 37, 75 percent had died. Only two of the 17 lived to be more than 50. One child died of starvation, and one woman was killed when struck on the head by a mace.”

[53] Gemini inquiry: Please tell me more about Jack Kent’s Bereavement Vision theory (The Psychological Origins of the Resurrection. 1999). 4/30/26. Multiple sources.

[54] West, L. J. (1975). Clinical and theoretical overview of hallucinatory phenomena. In R. K. Siegel & L. J. West, Hallucinations: Behavior, experience, and theory. New York: John Wiley & Sons, p. 308.

[55] Habermas, 2001. Section: Additional Problems, Number 5.

[56] Breitenbach, Z., & McCoy, D. (no date). Could the disciples have been hallucinating when they saw the risen Jesus? Examining the flaws in the hallucination hypothesis.

[57] Gemini inquiry: Do some scholars argue that Jesus's disciples perpetrated a hoax and made up the story of his resurrection? 4/28/26.

[58] https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Dominic-Crossan.

[59] Crossan, J. D. (1998). The birth of Christianity: Discovering what happened in the years immediately after the execution of Jesus. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, p. xxx.

[60] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dominic_Crossan. Section: Views and Methodology.

[61] Johnson, L. T. (2010, August 2). The Jesus controversy: Why historical scholarship cannot find the living Jesus. America: The Jesuit Review. 

[62] Ingolfsland, D. (2025, June 5). Jesus and the “earliest sources:” An answer to John Dominic Crossan. Christian Research Journal. 

[63] Elkins, G. R., Barabasz, A. F., Council, J. R., & Spiegel, D. (2015). Advancing research and practice: the revised APA division 30 definition of hypnosis. Int. J. Clin. Exp. Hypn.63(1), 1–9, p. 6. doi: 10.1080/00207144.2014.961870.

[64] Spiegel, D., & Spiegel, H. (1985). Hypnosis. In Kaplan, H. I., & Sadock, B. J. (Eds.). (1985). Comprehensive textbook of psychiatry/IV. Baltimore, London, Los Angeles, Sydney: Williams & Wilkins, pp. 1389-1402.

[65] Gemini inquiry: These references do not specifically assert that Jesus used hypnotic or dissociation-inducing techniques to prime his disciples to "see" a risen Jesus, even though Jesus hinted at his coming crucifixion. (I vaguely recall some gospel verses about the disciples not understanding Jesus.) Are there any publications that do place responsibility with Jesus? 5/2/26. Among the sources Gemini cites: Wilson, I. (1984). Jesus: The evidence. Harper & Row. Stewart, D. (n.d.). Could Jesus have been a master hypnotist? Blue Letter Bible. Stewart argues against the hypnosis thesis after summarizing it.

[66] Gemini inquiry above, 5/2/26.

[67] Charisma. (no date). Psychology Today.

[68] Jack, C. (2025, May 20). What Is Ericksonian hypnosis? Psychology Today.

[69] Stewart, D. (no date). Could Jesus have been a master hypnotist? Blue Letter Bible.

[70] Crowds may be more susceptible than Stewart says. In graduate school, I took part in a group hypnosis demonstration in which the psychologist used a relaxation tape followed by a brief set of instructions that culminated in the majority of people present (about 50) being unable to move their extended arm. Being a poor hypnotic subject, I said to myself, “whadya mean, I can’t move my arm,” as I brought my arm back to a normal position.

[71] Spiegel & Spiegel (1985) say: “No patient has ever been lost in a hypnotic state. At worst, if left in the trance by an inept hypnotist, such an individual will eventually fall asleep and will reawaken in a nontrance condition.” p. 1395.

[72] Brown, D., Scheflin, A. W., Hammond, D. C. (1998). Memory, trauma treatment, and the law. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, p. 354.

[73] Langone, M. D. (2025, August 5). “He is risen!”: A cultic sales pitch? Posted in Substack. Also available michaellangonephd.com (under “essays”).

[74] Habermas, G. (1996). The historical Jesus: Ancient evidence for the life of Christ. Joplin, MO: College Press.

[75] Habermas, 1996, p. 18.

[76] Habermas, 1996, p. 20.

[77] Habermas, 1996, p. 22.

[78] Habermas, 1996, p. 22.

[79] Habermas, 1996, p. 25.

[80] Habermas, 1996, p. 123.

[81] Habermas, 1996, p. 126.

[82] Habermas, 1996, p. 127.

[83] Habermas, 1996, p. 139.

[84] Habermas, 1996, p. 158.

[85] Habermas, 1996, p. 244.

[86] Habermas, 1996, p. 257.

[87] Habermas, 1996, p. 258.

[88] Kreeft, P. (no date). Evidence for the Resurrection of Christ. PeterKreeft.com.

[89] Kreeft. Section: The Strategy: Five Possible Theories.

[90] Kreeft. Section: The Strategy: Five Possible Theories.

[91] Kreeft. Section: Refutation of the Swoon Theory: Nine Arguments.

[92] Kreeft. Section: Refutation of the Hallucination Theory: Thirteen Arguments.

[93] Kreeft, Section: Refutation of the Myth Theory: Six Arguments.

[94] Britannica Editors. (2026, April 17). Myth. Britannica.com. Section: Relation of myths to other narrative forms.

[95] Myth. Britannica.com.

[96] Myth. Britannica.com.

[97] Myth. Britannica.com.

[98] Myth. Britannica.com.

[99] Gemini inquiry: Who are the leading scholars who claim that the Gospels are myth? 5/19/26. Multiple sources.

[100] Gemini inquiry above, 5/19/26.

[101] Gemini inquiry above, 5/19/26.

[102] Wright, 2003, p. 33.

[103] Wright, 2003, p. 557.

[104] Wright, 2003, pp. 686-687.

[105] Wright, 2003, pp. 686-687.

[106] Magisterium.com inquiry: How credible are the New Testament accounts about Jesus, both in general and respect to details (e.g., Jesus's words on the sermon on the mount)? 5/8/26. Multiple sources.

[107] Ehrman, p. 93.

[108] Gemini inquiry: What have oral history methodologists said about the reliability of the oral history that the Gospels relied upon? 4/5/26. Multiple sources.

[109] Bailey, K. E. (1991). Informal controlled oral tradition and the Synoptic Gospels. Themelios. Section: An alternative way forward: informal controlled oral tradition.

[110] Bailey, Section: An alternative way forward: informal controlled oral tradition.

[111] Gemini inquiry: According to historians, how long does it typically take for legends to develop after a historical event? 5/10/26. Multiple sources.

[112] Gemini inquiry above, 5/10/26.

[113] Gemini inquiry: Regarding time needed for legends to develop: Do we have concrete evidence of myths about Davy Crockett arising and how long after his death they arose? 5/11/26. Multiple sources.

[114] Magisterium.com inquiry: Paul’s conversion occurred about 3-5 years after Jesus’s crucifixion. Paul spent 3 years in Arabia. But he didn't write his letters until about 25-30 years later. Skeptics could ask: Why the delay? Why didn’t he write sooner? 5/16/26. Multiple sources.

[115] Blomberg, C. (no date). The reliability of the New Testament. The Gospel Coalition.

[116] Stezer, E. (2012, February 16). A closer look at the reliability of the New Testament. Reprinted by Bedford Road Baptist Church.

[117] Gemini inquiry: I'm looking for what would be a respected "methodology of history" article that addresses the reliability of data concerning Jesus to other ancient events and personages. 4/17/26. Multiple sources.

[118] Gemini inquiry: Can you direct me to an authoritative source that describes the number, kinds, and dates of the thousands of New Testament manuscripts that exist? 5/11/26. Gemini sources include: The New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room (NTVMR) and The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM).

[119] Gemini inquiry: Stelzer's statement seems to imply that we can be extremely confident that the New Testament VERY faithfully reflects what was originally written. I would like to refer to an authoritative source, preferably available online, that either confirms Stelzer's statement or qualifies it. 5/11/26. Multiple sources.

[120] Gemini inquiry above, 5/11/26.

[121] Gemini inquiry above, 5/11/26.

[122] Lewis, C. S. (1946, 1973). The great divorce. New York: HarperOne, p. 75.

[123] Langone, M. D. (2026, January 8). Possession, exorcism, and levitation: Take two aspirins? Published in Substack. Also available on michaellangonephd.com, essays section.

[124] Eire, C. (2023). They flew: A history of the impossible. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.