So far in this blog series we have seen that the evidence for the tomb of Jesus being empty is very strong. There is further evidence that Jesus was indeed bodily raised from the dead. There were numerous sightings of Jesus after his crucifixion which are well documented in the New Testament. The question is whether these alleged sightings of Christ were of a real, bodily Jesus? Or were they (as some suggest) simply dreams, visions or hallucinations? Some scholars suggest that Jesus' followers were simply hallucinating Some argue that while some of the New Testament figures thought they saw a bodily Jesus what they were really experiencing was some kind of 'vision'. This belief is accompanied by the idea that there were psychological reasons for why people like Paul and Peter thought they saw Jesus alive. Scholars like Goulder (in his book 'The Baseless Fabric of a Vision') suggest that Paul saw Jesus in a time of deep Crisis in his life and so imagined Jesus into being in front of him. Peter was overcome with grief and guilt after denying Jesus and so perhaps desperately wanted to see him again and so kind of hallucinated Jesus was with him again to make himself feel better. These theories are deeply problematic for several reasons 1) They are all just suspicions and guess work. They cannot be proved. 2) The New Testament reports the disciples touching Jesus (Luke 24:39, Matthew 28:9) and eating (Luke 24:43) which implies more than hallucinations. 3) The Bible itself distinguishes between 'visions' of Jesus (such as the one Stephen had in Acts 7 just before he was stoned to death) and actual physical sightings of Jesus. These 'visions' are not used as evidence for the bodily resurrection. 4) Most importantly theories that try to explain away the resurrection appearances using psychology as evidence are incredibly problematic because there is NO WAY that Biblical Scholars living two thousand years after the first Christians can attempt to perform a psycho-analysis of people like Peter and Paul! It is difficult enough for a trained psychologist to psycoo-analyse you over a period of years! Why a 'biblical scholar' believes they can perform psycho-analyse people when they have extremely limited biographical information is beyond me. 5) Such theories deal with absolutely none of the evidence available to us. They are just wild speculation. Paul says that 500 people saw Jesus all at the same time! In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul lists a whole host of people who saw a risen, bodily Jesus including 500 people who saw Jesus all at the same time. It is highly unlikely that 500 people could have all hallucinated exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. All of these people could have been interrogated about the resurrection as well. Paul would not have named them if he was lying or his testimony was false as he would have been found out! Pail is so confident that Christians resurrection bodies will be physical and bodily because he knew Jesus was bodily raised from the dead! The sightings of a bodily, real, risen Jesus make the most logical sense. They explain why there was an empty tomb. These wild psychological and hallucination theories are based on no historical evidence. They cannot explain why there was an empty tomb or why the early church exploded all over the known world in the way it did. They cannot explain why the early Christians were so adamant that Jesus' resurrection was bodily. These wacky theories do not stand up to logic, the evidence or any level of interrogation! In our next post we turn to the 1st Century Jewish view of resurrection and see if this can tell us anything about whether Jesus really was raised from the dead. Like this post on facebook or tweet it! | Missed part one, two or four of 'Was Jesus Bodily Raised from the Dead?' Read part one here Read part two here Read part four here |