Ok, we’ve finally arrived at what will likely be the most contentious issue (outside of the explanation) – the post-mortem appearances of Jesus after He was crucified. We will also examine the radical transformation in the lives of the disciples and others because that lends support to the resurrection hypothesis.Let’s begin with the creed in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-8:
"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born."
This creed is important because not just of its content, but its age. Habermas, in Strobel, claims that a case can be made for dating this creed to within two to eight years of the events themselves. Craig says five years. Note: this isn’t the book of Corinthians, but the creed itself. What’s significant about this creed is the falsifiability of its claims. Here we have Paul listing all the people who witnessed the resurrected Jesus included “five hundred of the brothers”, most of whom were still alive at the writing of the letter to the Corinthians. It seems like he is inviting the reader to check things out for themselves, and that’s not what someone who was propagating a lie would do. For example, Joseph Smith’s Twelve Golden Plates were seen only by members of his family and then taken back to heaven, so no one could verify what he claimed.
It also important that he lists James as a witness, because we know from the Gospels that Jesus’ family did not believe in Him during His life (Mark 3:21, 31-35; John 7:1-10), yet after the resurrection James shows up and becomes numbered among the Apostles, both the church historian, Eusebius and Jewish historian, Josephus, in his Antiquities records his death in the very temple - being thrown from the pinnacle and being stoned and clubbed to death under the three month “reign” of Ananus in 62AD for refusing to recant his faith in Christ. The charge is blaspheming the Law. What best explains his radical conversion? I think it best explained by his encountering the risen Lord. Think of it this way (to borrow an analogy from Craig) what would it take to convince you that your brother was the Messiah? Jesus’ death would have just confirmed in James’ mind that He was crazy, and wasn’t the Christ at all. For him to exhibit such a radical about-face and then die for his belief in his brother seems to me best explained by him meeting Jesus face-to-face after He rose.
Finally, Paul includes himself in this list of witnesses. He also goes on to remind us that when he encountered Christ he was incredibly hostile to the church, persecuting it (1 Cor 15:9), by, as Luke records, “breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” (Acts 9:1). Now he’s one of Jesus’ most ardent supporters, spending time in and out of prison, being threatened and beaten, and ultimately killed for his belief. Only coming upon a resurrected (and hence justified by God) Jesus could bring about such a change in his life.It is also important to note that the appearances of Jesus are recorded by multiple people. For instance, the appearance to Peter is reported by both Luke and Paul, John joins those two in recording the appearance to the eleven remaining disciples, and the appearance to the women disciples is reported by Matthew and John, which is an account that enjoys the criterion of embarrassment, lending it some credibility – since women could not even give evidence in court, why would the disciples use them as a source of evidence unless they were reporting what actually happened? These provide multiple, independent attestations of what happened. They may all be in one book we call the Bible, but remember - that book didn’t exist until the fourth century!
And what of the original disciples? The gospels record them demoralised after the crucifixion, Peter even denying ever knowing Him. We see them downtrodden and dismayed on the road to Emmaus, we see Thomas refusing to believe unless he can touch the body, despite what his fellows told him they witnessed. We see them having given up their hope in Jesus and returned to their previous occupations. Then we see simple fishermen (for the most part) transformed into men of wisdom and influence, spreading the Good News across many lands and cultures, ultimately taking their belief in the risen Jesus with them to their deaths. You don’t die for something unless you believe it to be true!
I think this brings us to try and explain these claims. Let’s have a look at two possibilities – legendary development and hallucination.
Some have claimed that the appearances are merely a legend that grew up over time. The problem is, there just wasn’t enough time. Even if we accept a date for the gospels that is in the late first century, that is too soon for legend to creep in. We’d still have people alive who were with those who witnessed the events who could accurately report what was said, for example we have a disciple of John, Polycarp, who didn’t die until the mid 100s. Also, the narratives lack signs of legendary embellishment - they present plain facts with little in the way of exaggeration. Exaggeration and legend tend to spring up three to five generations later, when all of the original witnesses are dead - two to three, at earliest - but this still would require a form of “proto-Christianity” (i.e., a form that is “in the making” so to speak, while people still are forming ideas and solidifying legends.) And though we have several different ideas and theologies about Christianity, and even some embellishments, these all come from either spurious sources that even Jerome threw out or much later documents, a hundred or more years after the death of the disciples. As it is, there is no form of “proto-Christianity” that can be verifiable. It seems to start from a solid and undeniable belief that Jesus of Nazareth was the incarnate God and had risen from the dead. There was simply no time for legend to start (by comparison, all accounts of miracles attributed to Muhammad come almost 500 years after the prophet died. None are contemporary with him). Finally, even if they were legendary, that doesn’t account for how the legend started. As Habermas says, the legend can’t tell you how the story started, just how it got bigger. And since the Jews had no concept of a bodily resurrection before the judgment of the whole world at the end of time, there seems no real place for such a story to have grown from. As Wright says, “there is no evidence for a form of early Christianity in which the resurrection is not a central belief.” Again – why would the disciples go to their deaths for something they invented?
The other main alternative offered is that of hallucination. Since it seems clear that they were sincere in their belief of a resurrected Jesus, perhaps they hallucinated Him? Psychologist Gary Collins has this to say:
"Hallucinations are individual occurrences. By their very nature only one person can see a given hallucination at a time. They certainly aren’t something which can be seen by a group of people [like the 500]. Neither is it possible that one person could somehow induce an hallucination in somebody else. Since an hallucination exists only in the subjective, personal sense, it is obvious that others cannot witness it."
Yet we have multiple people claiming to have seen that same thing at different times, and with different company. And let’s not forget Paul and James – hostile witnesses to the resurrection. We might claim that His disciples wanted to believe in Him so much that they caused themselves to hallucinate, but what would cause James and Paul to do the same? They had no such desire. Finally, how many of you can say that you know someone who has had an hallucination that was not brought on by either some form of substance or drug or some type of mental illness? Are we to believe that all of these witnesses were using hallucinogenic drugs, or were all mentally deranged? I think that stretches the explanatory power of this hypothesis too far.
I think that, given the alternatives, the hypothesis that Jesus really was raised from the dead, that He really appeared to those who claim to have seen Him is the explanation that best fits. It explains more of the facts in question than any rival hypothesis, and that is why I believe it to be the most reasonable explanation.
22 comments:
Interestingly, there were others that claimed messiah-ship. When I was 20 and first heard that it rocked my world. One thing I didn't understand then was in the Jewish mind-set, messiah-ship did not denote divinity. This is one thing that makes Y'eshua and Christianity very unique. And even resurrection would not spark a following - perhaps simply a response like "what an odd world we live in" as Tom Wright pointed out.
Among the other would-be messiahs, I think all but one were crucified or executed in some other manner. All were militaristic or quasi-militaristic. Their purpose was to bring God's people out of exile (from under Roman rule) and rebuild the Temple. It will become tedious to list reasons, people and history, but one thing I want to point out:
The usual pattern for followers of one they thought to be the messiah after he was killed (and thus proven a failure) was to find another within the same family. "Nothing would be more natural" for followers to but go and find a new messiah from the same family (that or give up hope of the messiah coming at all.) One example is the would-be messiah, Judas the Galilean.
But Jesus' family is well known in Christian history, even from external sources. One of the causes of rebellion in 62AD seems to be the casting down from the Temple pinnacle and stoning of "James the Just" (a Torah True Jew) who was listed as "the brother of the so-called Messiah" in Josephus' Antiquities 20. And the telling thing is, once again as Wright points out, "nobody in early Christianity ever dreamed of saying that James was the Messiah."
My point? That Y'eshua was considered the one true Messiah and divine from the very beginning.
Let’s begin with the creed in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-8. . . .
Actually, daring the reader or listener to check things out for themselves is something that people who propagate lies do all the time. It is a time-tested bluff that is part of every habitual liar’s tactical repertoire.
Nevertheless, I do not believe that Paul was trying to propagate a lie here and I have never seen any critic suggest that he was. I think that is a straw man. I have no doubt that Paul believed that Jesus had appeared to five hundred people as that was a part of the creed that he had received. However, I highly doubt that he knew the names of the five hundred brothers. I suspect that his reference to most of them being alive was based simply on the amount of time that had passed rather than personal knowledge of the health of individual people.
It also important that he lists James as a witness . . . .
I don’t think we can be sure from the gospels exactly what Jesus’ family believed about him during his life. Mark’s gospel portrays Jesus’ family as thinking him crazy early in his ministry. On the other hand, John’s gospel has his mother asking him to perform his first miracle. John says that Jesus’ brothers “did not believe in him,” but it also indicates that they were aware of the miracles. How or when James’ beliefs about Jesus changed is never addressed. The notion of a radical about-face as a result of a resurrection appearance is an apologetic interpolation.
I would also note that there is nothing in Josephus about James being thrown from a pinnacle, being clubbed to death, refusing to recant his faith, or the specific charge against him. All Josephus says is that James was stoned to death as a lawbreaker. You cannot attribute to Josephus the details that Eusebius reports 200 years later. Apologists have a bad habit of conflating later sources with earlier ones.
Finally, Paul includes himself in this list of witnesses . . . .
There is no reason to doubt that Paul’s conversion was the result of an experience which he understood to be an encounter with the risen Jesus. Nevertheless, it is important to note that Paul himself tells us very little about that experience. Nothing that Paul tells us rules out the possibility that it was visionary or hallucinatory.
It is also important to note that the appearances of Jesus are recorded by multiple people. . . .
It is also important to note that Mark doesn’t record any appearances. Moreover, there is a perfectly logical reason why Mark would have attributed the discovery of the empty tomb to women as part of an invented narrative. If Mark originated the story of the empty tomb in 65 A.D., his readers would have wondered why they hadn’t heard about it before. By attributing the discovery of the empty tomb to silly unreliable women who ran away without telling anyone, Mark could have been trying to show why the story was so slow in coming out. Later evangelists might have included men in the story to beef up its credibility. I don’t suggest that this proves that Mark invented the story, I merely point out that there is perfectly logical reason why he might have given women a prominent role if he had invented it.
It is also important to note that multiple people recording the story doesn’t mean that there were multiple sources for the original story.
And what of the original disciples? . . .
The only disciple who dies for his belief in the New Testament accounts is Stephen. The accounts of the other disciples dying for their faith are mostly much later traditions. This is another case where apologists conflate later sources with earlier ones.
According to one tradition, Peter and Paul died in Nero’s persecution of 64 A.D., but this had nothing to do with their beliefs. Nero was simply looking for a scapegoat for the fire in Rome that he was rumored to have started himself. He couldn’t have cared less what the early Christians believed and he wouldn’t have given them any opportunity to save their lives by recanting.
I think this brings us to try and explain these claims. Let’s have a look at two possibilities – legendary development and hallucination.
These are not in fact two separate possibilities. I have never read any liberal scholar who does not think that it was a combination of the two. There was an initial hallucinatory experience, but legends accumulated as the story was retold over time.
I am not sure who your source is for the idea that a legend could have not sprung up that quickly, but I hope it’s not A.N. Sherwin-White because it is a gross misrepresentation of his position.
The notion that groups of people cannot report a common hallucination doesn’t seem to be true either. Tens of thousands of people were reported to have witnessed the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima in October 1917. I suppose you could argue that God really did make the sun dance in the sky, but if you are going to allow for supernatural explanations, it is just as likely that God suspended the rule against shared hallucinations.
Yet we have multiple people claiming to have seen that same thing at different times, and with different company. . . .
This is not correct. We don’t have “multiple people claiming to have seen that same thing at different times.” We have a couple of people claiming that multiple people saw the same thing at different times. We don’t have 500 people claiming that they saw the risen. We have Paul claiming that 500 people saw the risen Jesus. It is an important distinction.
Excellent questions and great points!
I'm gonna eat my lunch today slowly, finish work and then go fellowship tonight. I might answer after that or might be tomorrow.
Very quickly though, you don't seriously think Christianity has survived for two thousand years without someone already thinking of those do you?
I'll get to you as soon as I can. For now, tempura unagi! Yummy!
Two thoughts in response to your question:
(1) For most of those two thousands years, people who thought about such things kept their mouths shut if they knew what was good for them.
(2) Many religions survive and thrive without ever satisfactorily defending the dubious historicity of their claims. According to some estimates, Mormonisn has grown just as fast as Christianity did in its first two hundred years.
Clearly, from the number of writings we have on Christianity including spurious, slanderous or even silly works and works that stand up to serious scrutiny, I would not say that is so much the case here, though you do make a very good point (and its a strong case for later Christianity with the Roman Gov/Pope power tugs, people who tried to speak up and stop the witch trials, "holy wars," etc.)
It is certainly true that those in the know should keep the know a no-no. But its very naive to think that is the case only for religions. Its just as much true, if not more so, for governments, particularly monarchies, or secret organizations like the Illuminati or Freemasons. (Yes, I'm being a bit pithy, I want to finish my lunch.)
As for Mormonism, there are (at least) eight factors off the top of my head that we need to take into consideration:
1) Christianity as Christ taught and demanded asks a lot of it's believers, e.g. pain, suffering, cross-bearing and their whole lives to become subjugated to an all powerful God for all of eternity (albeit therein one finds complete wholeness and currently incomprehensible joy that simply doesn't exist apart from God) and Mormonism (just a modern, twisted form of ancient Gnosticism) touts Happiness, security and, in the end, if you're a good little boy (not girl, mind you) you get to be god over your own planet just 'Elohim' is the god over ours. (Like I said before, an abysmal understanding of Hebrew and theology (not to mention logic, philosophy, metaphysics, geneology, zoology...etc etc)
Besides, who doesn't want to become a god?! That was Satan's first lie to Eve, "you will be like God!"
2) They breed like rabbits. One of the tenets is that the more children you have, the better off (the more spiritual inhabitants for your future planetoid, eh?)
3) a downright fantastic mission program from which most Christians should take note, as well as
4) there are significantly more people in the world today therefore increasing possible targets,
5) better travel and safety standards,
6) easier access to (relatively free) foreign nations than ever before and
7) media techniques that didn't exist in the 1st Century, and finally,
8) little chance of mass persecution (save in some Asian countries - where Mormonism isn't so prevalent but traditional Christianity is.
Each of those contributes to quick growth, particularly the first and second.
Now, you wanna give us a chance to answer the previous questions? I'm still going to eat my lunch first though. Tummy's a growlin'.
Part 1
Vinny is right. I have always had a problem with this explanation. Daring the listener to check is something that liars are prone to do. In the modern mindset anyway; we have no evidence that it was or was not the case in the 1st Century, nor can we. I imagine it was.
On the other hand “the bluff” is usually the plea of pathological deceivers and liars, and though its impossible to psychoanalyze someone that lived two millennia ago (its darn near impossible to do it with someone sitting across from you) Paul exhibits no signs of such pathology in any writings by him, either by his hand or dictated. Its usually safe to assume a man that so Pharisaically professed, argued and wrote so profusely on morality isn’t all that prone to lying himself. (1) I agree with Vinny though, I don’t think Paul is lying here.
I don’t know the reason for Vinny’s sudden and seemingly amazing belief in something in the Bible, but my reason for this conclusion also answers another of the queries put forward. Paul’s “bluff” or dare doesn’t seem so hard to believe when we quit pretending that everyone was chained down to only one city or provence and, as well, lacked the capability to communicate over long distances in the 1st Century. These Christians traveled! They could check Paul’s claim and I think he meant them to because he was speaking specifically of a known group of individuals in the original Jerusalem church, many of whom had probably been pilgrims for the Passover during the time of the Resurrection and were included in either the original crowd that had welcomed Christ on His donkey or when he was tried and crucified.(2)(3) These were quite likely some of the very people that helped spread Christianity originally to new places so fast when they left Jerusalem’s Holy Feast and went home taking the joy and news of Messiah with them.
Many of the people to whom Paul was writing could have personally known one, or some, of the 500, and its not inconceivable that even one or more of those 500 were present at the reading of Paul’s letter. Paul wouldn’t have had to name names because many of the early Christians knew one another, particularly as we read more than a few of the same people (or at least names) popping up in several letters, not all of whom were itinerant church planters.
More after the break!
(1) Though that obviously wasn’t the case for Joseph Smith. In his case, however, we still hold contemporaneous reports of treasure hunting, horse rustling, polygamy and charlatanry. So he doesn’t quite seem the stand up guy that Paul appears to have been. Notice, Vinny, I said appears.
(2) It perhaps needs restating that in the 1st Century Jewish mindset, a resurrection was not out of the question, nor did it mean divine oneness with the God of Israel – it was a question of timing; it was believed that everyone (or at least the righteous in God) would rise in the last days anyway. So they may have said a lot of things, but attributing to a risen corpse divinity wasn’t one of them. Jesus must have left enough clues to His purpose of God’s Kingdom that messiahship and divinity were already in the mindset of Jerusalem’s inhabitants and visitors before He died that when He rose they actually started a new religion. And I believe He did.
(3) Rene Girard has some great stuff on the mimetic contagion of crowds in his book, “I See Satan Fall Like Lightning” which is not so much a Christian work as it is a socio-anthropological study of how scapegoats and sacrifice in mythology form and play out.
Part 2
On another point, I need to apologize. I know that Eusebius had written an account much later and that both Dave and I had blended his account in with Josephus’ much earlier one. Given our discussion so far, I don’t know if its considered consistent to accuse one of conflating evidence on grounds that you yourself profess. You like very much explaining the evidence (I would say explaining it away) but don’t like when we do it…? I’m not such a stickler for it, though it should be used sparingly. More on that in a moment. But what we did is called a “harmony” and though it isn’t always very popular, it is a common practice (and not usually looked down on in any particular field save that of Christianity.) Others do it often as way of attempting to explain what otherwise may seem to be discrepancies in (not just historical) accounts.
Let me give a quick example:
Two men are being questioned separately by the insurance company as to how, when and why they have a dent in their car. The driver says they hit a young buck as they were coming home from the beach. The other says a big animal ran into their car as they pulled out of the diner parking lot.
Its not implausible that they had stopped for dinner on their way home from the beach. The driver tells the bigger picture of where they had been over the weekend with fine detail of “a young buck” perhaps because he knows what size a buck’s antlers may be. The other fellow gives fine details of where they were exactly because that is what he was thinking of – his dinner and the upset stomach the accident caused him – and because he didn’t see the animal clearly due to his shock. This is a form of “explaining the evidence,” yes, as I said, but it is one that is necessary. One that, without doing so, insurance agencies and police detectives would be up the creek. It is not explaining away evidence. That is a very important distinction.
And more so, the insurance agency didn’t ask the right questions. Since for us, in the case of the NT, it is too late, we must deal with what we have, the evidence that is available.
So, that is what I have to say, as flimsy as that may seem, about conflating sources.
As for James thinking his brother crazy, I don’t think he ever did. There may have been a lot of things in his brother’s life that he and the family didn’t understand and grew slowly suspicious over. Not because they didn’t believe he was the messiah, but because his family had seen certain things that made them think he was! They undoubtedly had their own ideas of what the messiah would do, though, as all Jews did (and some still do). But when Jesus began His ministry, as compared to other so-called or would-be messiahs of the time, every indication is that Jesus’ ministry was so radically different that none of the family knew what to think of Him. The crucifixion solidified their failed messiah mindset (and everyone else's) but the resurrection turned James and his whole family around so completely that James became a strong supporter. The head of the Jerusalem church as existing records seem to show.
(aside: A pretty quirky source has my favorite of harmonies on the family’s belief and Jesus’ reaction: Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt; and Christ the Lord, Road to Cana. Extraordinarily good books. Exquisite attention to detail, I highly recommend them to everyone.)
Enough for now. Going to bed. Will respond to the rest later!
bed, sweet bed. how i have missed you of late... by staying up too late...
if you would, please let me finish before any retort is offered. I'm not done yet, just sleepinngggggg zzzzzzzzzzzz.....
What makes you think that “the insurance agencies and police detectives would be up the creek” without the harmonization? Can’t they just note in the reports that there was some discrepancy in the stories and note any plausible explanations for those discrepancies? Your reconciliation is certainly one plausible reason. On the other hand maybe they stopped at a bar and got drunk and then drove off the road and hit a cow. The passenger doesn’t want to admit they went to a bar so he says they stopped at a diner. The driver decides not to mention the fact that they stopped at all.
The historian’s goal is to figure out what most likely happened in the past, but he does not have to come up with a single narrative at every point if the evidence is not sufficient to enable him to do so. He is allowed to say “it’s too close too call” or “the sources aren’t good enough to express any certainty” or “our best guess is this but we really can’t eliminate these three other possibilities” or even “we just don’t really know what happened.”
Well, you beat me to the punch. Sorry, its been busy here. Let me comment on the previous first. Then I gotta take my daughter to the pool and will respond to the rest later.
Anywho, here we go.
Part 1
To one quick point. No, I am sorry, the two, hallucination and myth, are indeed two separate theories. There may be scholars who claim that both factors were present, however they do stand apart. Many past scholars, maybe not so creative, have listed one and not the other. Its certainly better tactics to claim that both happened, but they are, in fact, two. Not to say that both couldn’t have happened of course. But let’s look at the evidence, once again, holistically, as we have it.
First, to myth. My sources are no, not Sherwin-White. They come from folk-tale and literary scholars, many of whom have no interest, whatsoever, in Christian history. Many do mind you. But many do not. Two that do have a stake in Christianity - one actually determined his faith by this subject! - and are considered masters by skeptics and believers alike are Clive Staples Lewis and Rene Girard. They hardly exhaust our sources, but you are hard pressed to find two better scholars. If you disagree, then I have nothing more to say, for I can hardly debate with one that finds Cambridge standards low. Therefore my previous statements stand.
On to hallucinations. A subject of great interest to me as a magician. (You didn’t know?) Tom Wright has something to say on the matter (which covers both hallucination and myth) and I can do no better:
“A further twist has been given to Bultmann’s hypothesis by Gerd Lüdemann. He suggests that Peter was so deeply grieved over Jesus’ death that he experienced what, as we noted earlier, people in such a state often report: a sense of the loving presence of the recently deceased person, perhaps even a sense of him speaking and reassuring him. Peter then, so Lüdemann asks us to believe, communicated this experience to the others, who were spontaneously filled with joy at the thought that Jesus was still alive. Meanwhile Paul underwent the opposite sort of hallucination: having been vehemently opposed to the new movement, he was overcome by guilt and experienced a guilt-induced fantasy which he, too, was able to share with others to remarkably powerful effects.
“My response to this proposal is (a) that it requires enormous credulity to suppose that, even allowing Peter and Paul to have had such fantasies or hallucinations they would have generated more than a passing comment of sympathy among their colleagues or contemporaries; (b) that psychological theories of this sort—about people two thousand years ago in a different culture—are at best unprovable and at worst wildly fantastic. But, and most important, (c) the proposal simply does not make sense within the world or first-century Judaism.
“As we see from the story of Rhoda in Acts 12, first-century Jews knew about post-mortem visitations from recently deceased friends, and they already had language systems for speaking of such phenomena. “It must be his angel,” they said, when they thought they were having a visit of just this sort from Peter. They did not say that Peter had been raised from the dead. To put it another way, if we had been members of that group in Acts 12, and if we had been made aware of a recently executed Peter as a ghostly or spiritual presence with us, we would have concluded, certainly, that Peter was now alive with God. But we still also would have thought that we would have to claim his corpse for burial the next day, and we still would have believed that it remained for him actually to be raised, along with the rest of God’s people, at the last day.” (N.T. Wright Christian Origins and the Resurrection of Jesus: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Problem)
Part 2
Far from conclusive (it hardly could be), Wright’s lecture does satisfy my intellect and curiosity. I may get jabbed with “both of those are insignificant in importance and size” but, hey, I need a little humility my way. I suggest the whole lecture series, which can be found on Tom’s webpage (link at the right, under Authors). Hallucination is often the quick answer to the question of the Resurrection appearances. But the theory only works in part as we see, not when looked at the bigger picture.
This also seems to be an issue when Vinny mentioned the Miracle of the Sun. Ah yes, a favorite. Did it happen? Who knows. Does it matter in this discussion? Not in the least, it is irrelevant, but a nice diversion. Why irrelevant? Because one has 1) automatically considered it a hallucination instead of a miracle (again, bias), 2) used it as reference in a case vastly different from 1st century Jewish thought, and 3) is now trying to explain away evidence rather than even explain it.
Nevertheless, I like this story and will humor the disconnect. Was it a hallucination?
John De Marchi, a Catholic Priest present (and from whose writings most claims come) states ‘that the prediction of an unspecified "miracle", the abrupt beginning and end of the alleged miracle of the sun, the varied religious backgrounds of the observers, the sheer numbers of people present, and the lack of any known scientific causative factor make a mass hallucination unlikely. That the activity of the sun was reported as visible by those up to 18 kilometers away, also precludes the theory of a collective hallucination or mass hysteria,’ according to De Marchi’s writings. (De Marchi 1952b:150, 278–82) Yep, sounds like something the Catholic church puts out. They do love their miracles (and if God won’t provide a new one every so often, they just might. But I do love a good yarn. -Sorry to any Catholic readers out there)
So, was it a miracle, and actual act of God? I see no reason to doubt it, but I see no reason to care either. It doesn’t seem to have purpose other than drawing attention (despite the various meanings attributed to it). It isn’t a life changing phenomenon nor do I care to start a new religion because the “sun shook.” (Besides, this is an easy effect to achieve for many magicians. But we’ll never tell! ;P ) The fact that many believe in something that seems super-natural isn’t proof that all “miracles” are hoaxes, nor that all are true. David Copperfield can make the Statue of Liberty disappear. So what? Christ’s rising from the grave goes far beyond a magic trick or even a mass hallucination as Wright has pointed out.
Vinny is very right to point out in his last comment the distinction between 500 people coming forth and claiming they witnessed the incarnate God raised to life and two or three people saying that 500 people saw it. True. It might be nice to remember though that only 5 percent of the population was literate (if that) and couldn’t write about it, nor was writing in one’s journal a common practice in the 1st Century for most people and blogging was, unfortunately, not invented yet.
be back in an hour or so and get to the rest
I'm not looking for just any explanation, but the best one that fits all the evidence. What's the surrounding evidence say? In this case, is a farmer missing a cow? Was there alcohol in the driver's bloodstream (let's say he got tested when they filed the report.) We do back-ground checks and ask the right questions - in as much as we can. We use the evidence we have. Again, we want the best explanation possible and we keep our biases out. It is common habit for both sides, Christian and atheist, to read back into the evidence any ideology that one possesses. We cannot avoid this. But it also shows where our biases lay. Are we exclusive to any and all supernatural phenomenon a priori, or just those whose implications we don't like? More on that later perhaps.
Backtracking a moment, if you don't think the police need harmonies or should pursue even the wildest of chances, then I hope I'm on the jury to help you should you ever be convicted wrongly of a crime. Poor ol' Andy Dufresne.
At any rate, considering the evidence, perhaps that means someone had a hallucination, as has been claimed, in the case of Peter or Paul. I don't think, due to other contributing and background factors that is the case. As Wright pointed out before and also considering when people did have hallucinations or visions, as Peter did with the sheet of unclean foods, there is language and awareness of said facts. Besides, God speaks through dreams, according to the Bible anyway, perhaps those could be waking dreams, visions or hallucinations. These instances are recorded. The appearances of Jesus, besides to Paul, do not bear any marks of such happenings. I don't disregard a hallucination just because it's a hallucination. What is the message that it brings, is it purposeful, is it prophetic (in the telling-the-future sense), etc.
Can we prove it? No, of course not. But the writings, as far as ancient ones go, are very early, stand the tests of arch. digs and fine detail about Jerusalem in its days before the fall that indicate the originals were written before 70AD. (Had they been written after, I see no plausible reason even for the sake of deception, that Jesus' followers wouldn't have spoken of the Temple destroyed - as that was yet another fulfilled prophesy for them. Yet, we don't see them hiding, or flaunting the fact that the Gospels weren't written the day Jesus ascended. They seemed perfectly happy to not embellish facts that would promote their cause. Miracles may have theological and propagandizing affects, but none of the miracles seems out of place, or purposeless - like the Miracle of the Sun does.)
Are we saying you should believe everything you read? Of course not! We have gone over that. In fact, I couldn't agree with you more, Vinny, that we are seeking an explanation for events that best suits all known evidence, circumstantial and, in this case, philosophical, meta-narrative, prophetic, etc. as well.
Do I follow Christ because I feel lost otherwise and He fulfills my every want and need? Not exactly. He scares the crud out me and messes up my whole agenda, honestly. He completely turned my world upside down. But I cannot deny the fact that the historical evidence, that afore mentioned prophetic metanarrative, all of creation, the cycle of life and even, yes, pagan mythic corn gods, seem to point to a, god, even the God, who enjoins His world and then dies to set it right and comes back to life to bring it with Him back into Himself. This is just too much circumstance and coincidence to miss and too fine a tuning on the extraordinarily deep, almost crafted, details to suggest even genius human origins and it having formed too quickly without any proto-beliefs to be anything other than, in my humble opinion, Divine intrusion into our world, albeit of the most graceful kind.
But not just my humble opinion, but that of hundreds of thousands, even millions of truly committed followers of Christ. To say that you are smarter than some of the finest minds, artists, scientists, and theologians smacks of, well, to put it euphemistically, bias.
(1) N.T. Wright believes in the literal truth of things like the zombie saints of Matt 28:53, and yet, he thinks that a psychological hypothesis borders on the “wildly fantastic.”
(2) It strains Wright’s credulity to suppose Peter and Paul could have attracted a following if they had only had hallucinations, and yet, Joseph Smith attracted a substantial following based on his story of sticking his head in a hat and translating golden plates with magic seer stones.
Can you really do no better than what Wright finds believable?
wow. That is a good point. But, as I have said, Joseph Smith's religion offers just what people want: all the goodness and no trials. He sure did claim some whoppers though, didn't he?
The cultures were, once again, vastly different. Simply this, Jewish 1st century, though fiercely monotheistic, believed in and longed for a coming messiah. Only one. And they didn't believe that he was to be a risen one, either. If any rising was to be done before the "end of times" it was simply phantasmal - and those were apparently common (no doubt many were dreams, aspirations or hallucinations).
Smith builds his story up from Christianity itself. He takes what he knows to be good stock and mass produces a watered down and fanciful version. How could he? He knows people trust Christians (at least in his time, anyway) if not Christ. He knows many are looking for something spectacular or "spiritual" in their lives, at the very least hope, and feeds it to them like babies. In a word, he builds on another's foundation. (Something Paul wouldn't do) because he knew the foundation was secure.
On the other hand, I believe in the "zombie saints" too, as you call them. (Don't fall out of your chair.) Then again, my believing in that has very little to do with historical evidence. There isn't much there, I know. But is there a reason why I shouldn't use Wright, Richard Bauckham, John A.T. Robinson, Martin Hengel, Jacob Neusner, Geza Vermes (who isn't a believer) Kenneth, Gentry, or even my own scholarship, poor as it is, in dealing with these issues just because you don't like what it implies? I didn't mean to make you think we would only refer to one scholar for all our work, and then force you to turn the debate ad hominem.
Do you honestly want to sit there in your chair and tell me that you think a psychological analysis of someone dead two thousand years is anything other than laughable? I dare you try that one on Ehrman or even Sherwin-White himself.
It boils down to this... if someone is looking for proof that the Resurrection happened, you won't get it (well, at least until you give your life back to God, then you receive the confirmation that comes with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit) ... but, as we all agree here, on both sides of the discussion, nothing in history can be proved per say. Its hard enough to prove, Ehrman once quipped, who won the 2004 presidential election.
That is why W.L. Craig (cleverly?) titled one of his books "Reasonable Faith" - it is just that. We cannot prove the Resurrection, but neither can you prove that George Washington ever lived. However we do have the rest of America's history to account for, and in like fashion, though a great deal more layered, the history of the Church when it comes to Christ. No, it cannot be proved unfortunately. But neither can it be disproved.
Isn’t it possible that Christianity caught on and grew so quickly because it offered people of that day what they wanted? Might not the promise of eternal life hold sufficient appeal even without additional evidence for first century slaves and peasants who were living hand to mouth?
I cannot comment on every author that you mentioned, but I question how much weight should be placed on any scholar whose arguments seem to rely so much on his own personal incredulity. Just as you are unimpressed when a skeptic declares miracles to be impossible, few skeptics are likely to be impressed that a Christian apologist finds a non-miraculous explanation to be wildly fantastic.
In any case, doesn’t Wright’s insistence that a hallucination wouldn’t have “generated more than a passing comment of sympathy among [Peter or Paul’s] colleagues or contemporaries” similarly require a two-thousand-year removed psychological analysis that is at least as laughable as anything I have suggested? What type of psychological analysis does it take to determine the truth-telling propensities of the authors of the gospels based on nothing more than their writing styles?
Don’t you also engage in some pretty fancy comparative socio-psychological analysis as well? You are so sure how first century Jews and pagans thought and how nineteenth century Mormons thought and acted that you can confidently dismiss the possibility that they had a similar level of religious gullibility. For that matter, you must believe that first century followers of Jesus were so discerning that they never would have spread unfounded contemporaneous miracle stories as did the twelfth century followers of Francis of Assisi and the sixteenth century followers of Sabbati Zevi. How is that analysis not wildly speculative?
I'm sure you do find it wildly fantastic. But then again, that is why it was recorded: because they knew something fantastic had happened.
But thats a very good point. And, you are right of course. It comes down to using the noggin' we're given, I guess. There is surrounding data, background, previous history, etc. that needs to be taken into consideration for each case. Jewish history and specific beliefs at the time, as well as recent history for Smith as well, including the Enlightenment, etc.
The 1st century Jews believed in SomeOne, whereas, very generally speaking, after the Enlightenment and during the early 1800's, people seemed to be starving and wanting to believe in anything. This is simply an overarching statement based on writings from the period, types of literature and art produced, politics ventured, etc.
Chesterson's dictum, if you don't believe in something, you'll believe anything holds true.
Thinking quickly on something that was said earlier, it is nigh-impossible to make thorough psychological evaluations of individuals that lived two thousand years ago, it is not out of the question to discern what a culture or people could or could not accept as a rule. Some thoughts are specifically 'indigenous,' as it were, to a period and people as is evident in their literature and art and some thoughts were simply foreign. How they may react must be stated with care, but that they would view something as alien could be generally proposed.
It doesn’t require any individual psychological evaluations to conclude that first century Jews and pagans were probably just as likely to be taken in by a charismatic religious leader as any other group of people have been throughout human history, or that they were just as prone to religious visions.
On the other hand, I am not sure how far you can extrapolate from the literature and art of an ancient culture to the mindset of illiterate peasants and slaves who were living a hand-to-mouth existence. I imagine that they would be attracted by a religion that promised eternal life, forgiveness of sin, and justice for the downtrodden even if specific elements were alien to them.
I'm not sure that was what attracted them. Judaism has those. The forgiveness of sins is a once-and-for-all sacrifice in Christianity that replaced the Temple sacrifice of Judaism. I think the attraction lay in the sheer witness of love that spread and shown from them. It was Jesus' will that they be like the light upon the hill, which is a reference to Jerusalem being the light of the world for all the nations around them.
In a letter to the Emperor dated 137AD, Aristides writes:
"It is the Christians, O Emperor, who have sought and found the truth, for they acknowledge God. They do not keep for themselves the goods entrusted to them. They do not covet what belongs to others. They show love to their neighbors. They do not do to another what they would not wish to have done to themselves. They speak gently to those who oppress them, and in this way they make them their friends. It has become their passion to do good to their enemies. ... If anyone among them is poor or comes into want while they themselves have nothing to spare, they fast two or three days for him. In this way they can supply any poor man with the food he needs. This, O Emperor, is the rule of life of the Christians, and this is their manner of life."
Emperor Julian once said, "Those godless Galileans feed our poor in addition to their own."
It is for this love that Christianity spread. O that we would return to this sacrificial love! The world needs it now!
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