Truth Unites - The NEXT BEST Theory of Easter is Still Pretty Weak

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Gavin Ortlund discusses historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ, the backbone of Christianity. See Sean McDowell's book on the fate of the disciples: https://www.amazon.com/Fate-Apostles-Sean-McDowell/dp/1138549134Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Imagine that you're making up a story that in 1992, you climbed Mount Everest. And you really didn't do that, but you're just making this up. The last thing you're going to do is say that you climbed Mount Everest with Senator Ted Kennedy or a basketball player Dennis Rodman because people know that person. Because people can say, wait a second, Ted Kennedy, the senator, he never went to climb Mount Everest. I remember that. That was only 35 years ago or something, you know. Same with Joseph Veramethia. Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection of Christ, so it makes sense to focus on this event

when we're considering Christianity or when we're proclaiming Christianity, for those of you who have doubts about Christianity, this is a great place to focus. It's also so fascinating and it's so edifying and interesting and uplifting and encouraging for those of you who are Christians to contemplate what happened, both what happened and then the evidence for it. I couldn't be more excited for this video. What we're going to do, I've been studying this for a while, reading all these books, what we're going to do is highlight the strength of the historical evidence of the resurrection of Christ

by considering an alternative theory, some regard as the best alternative, grave theft plus hallucinations, and we'll emphasize some evidence along the way that's sometimes neglected like James the brother of Christ. We're going to start with establishing or seeking to establish three basic facts. Number one, Jesus died by crucifixion. number two, and we'll explain why that's about as certain as knowledge of ancient history can be. Number two, his followers had experiences leading them to believe that he had risen from the dead. Now, we're not saying he did rise from the dead. We're just saying that belief arose because of experiences.

And in a moment, I'm going to describe the particular quality of their testimony of that belief and why I think it has an endearing quality to it. And number three, his burial tomb. was discovered to be empty. That's the most contested one, so I'm going to take some time to make a case for the trustworthiness of the gospel accounts of the burial of Christ by Joseph of Arimathea and the subsequent discovery of the empty tomb. I think we can establish that with a high degree of probability. Now, of course, that is not all that we could draw from. This is actually surprisingly contested among Christians, these methodological points about how much you're trying to argue from.

It's just for our purposes here, we're going to start making a basic case for the resurrection with these three, but you can incorporate other things as well. So to summarize and hammer them home, say we can remember them, remember these three things. The death by crucifixion, the experiences leading to belief in the resurrection and the empty tomb, those are the three facts. Basically what we'll do is in two movements of this video, but the first half, we'll try to argue for those three and basically say we have reasons to accept them as historically accurate. And then in the second half of the video, we'll say, well, what's the best explanation for those facts?

And we'll consider one particular alternative that is among the better options from a naturalistic perspective, grave theft plus hallucinations. I'll explain that. All I'm arguing for is a modest conclusion that the resurrection of Christ is a better explanation than any known alternative or imagined alternative like that one. even if somebody just thought, okay, yeah, resurrection is 51% likely, grave robbery and hallucinations is 49% likely. They could agree with my argument here, though I think it's stronger than 51.49, but I also think it's wise to be careful. Historical study can only take us so far. We cannot prove something in a demonstrative, mathematical way. We're dealing with probability at best, and our judgments about historical data are influenced by our prior beliefs and our worldview.

However, having said, I think we need to be careful about how we put this. I think the evidence for the resurrection of Christ, though it's not conclusive and definitive, is compelling. And let me explain why. So let's dive in. Number one, why do we think we can know that Jesus died by crucifixion? Almost everyone accepts this. This is about as strong as it gets.

John Dominic Crosin, who is a critical scholar involved. with the Jesus Seminar said Jesus' death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be. And he references there where you can see as you leave this up on the screen underlined two non-Christian historians who reference Jesus. I underlined their names there. Josephus is the first one. By the way, so Josephus is writing around 93-94 AD. For a long time, it's been disputed among scholars whether and how much of that passage about Jesus is authentic. But this brand new book from Oxford University Press authenticated that account and also reveals something amazing, namely that Josephus was

directly familiar with those who had put Jesus on trial. Amazing. So Josephus would have had access to highly reliable information about Jesus. And I'm going to be interviewing the author of that book, Tom Schmidt. I try not to give, here's the thumbnail that you'll see. Look out for this coming up in the next couple weeks. I try not to give sensationalistic thumbnails, though sometimes my thumbnails in the past have been a little bit out there. But I wish maybe I should make this one more. I'll try to make a video title that'll capture the significance of this book because I think it is significant. And by the way, you can find it for free online. So check out that interview and we'll say more about all that. For the purposes of this video, let's just say almost everyone accepts Jesus died

by crucifixion. You have to be pretty out there to deny that. That's very well attested in a huge array of different sources. Second, Jesus' followers had experiences leading them to believe he had risen from the dead. Again, this is pretty widely accepted in the core claim there. Gerd Ludamon, who's an influential New Testament scholar, who's often called an atheist. I actually don't know his religious views, but he's definitely not like a conservative Christian. He thinks it's hallucinations and stuff, as we'll talk about. Nonetheless, he said it may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus's death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ. That's an amazing sentence.

Now, again, he's not saying Jesus did actually appear to them as the risen Christ. He thinks hallucinations were involved, but the point is they had experiences where they thought this was happening. Okay. And that conclusion is widely shared because of a huge array of early testimony for this belief, including in creeds that are quoted in the New Testament that go back very early into the history of the church, like these two from Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 15. So Romans 1, Martin Hengel talks about the tradition behind this sentence in Romans 1, 2 to 4, as going back to the earliest congregation in Jerusalem possibly.

Werner Kramer argued it goes back to the early Aramaic-speaking church. The creed cited in 1st Corinthians 15 is generally dated. is going back to the earliest years right after Jesus' crucifixion, somewhere between 30 and 35 AD, often dated somewhere in there. Most scholars think that Paul received that Creed, that Paul received that Creed during his visit to Jerusalem, which Galatians 1 places around three years after his conversion, so mid-30s A.D. And since that creed was already established when Paul received it, it has to predate that. So we're going into the early 30s.

you can find people like James Dunn saying that this tradition, we can be entirely confident, was formulated as tradition within months of Jesus's death. Not everyone believes in that. But the point is it's somewhere back in there. I'll put up two examples of other non-Christian scholars on the screen dating this creed to the early 30s. So you can see I'm not just appealing to prejudicial data here of apologists who are saying this. So something, the point is simple. something happens very early on to give rise to this belief. Whether he actually rose is a separate issue.

We're just saying people started talking about this, started believing in this, this becomes cemented in very early on. Now, why do we say experiences leading to a belief in resurrection, rather than just thinking that this is a deception or a fabrication or something like this? There are several reasons that make it very probable that this was a sincere belief. One reason that often brought up is it looks like many of the followers of Jesus are willing to suffer and die for this belief. This can be overstated. You'll hear people say all the time, well, all the disciples were martyred except for John. And we need to be more careful with that. We just can't say with any confidence from the historical evidence about many of them. We don't have evidence against it, but we just need

to be careful in putting weight upon that. So, I mean, I'm curious. I would like to know what Bartholomew and Thaddeus and these other apostles that we don't know as much about, what actually happened with them at the end of their life. But we just, there's so little we know about many of them. Nonetheless, the evidence is very strong that at least some of the apostles were martyred and or are willing to be persecuted, which is a separate thing. Peter and Paul, for example, we can say with a high degree of probability, we're martyred, both from New Testament evidence and from outside the New Testament, lots of church history evidence, First Clement and many others. You can see on the screen, I'll put up one example of that from Clement.

We also have James, the brother of Jesus, whose martyrdom is attested by Josephus, as you can see on the screen. More on James later. Most scholars also accept that the other James, the son of Zebedee, the brother of John, was martyred. That story is in Acts 12. If you want a walkthrough of the evidence for each particular apostle, see Sean McDowell's book on this topic. I'll put a link in the video description. At least we can say this much, there's a willingness to suffer for belief in the resurrection of Christ among many of Jesus' early followers.

And this will accord with reference to persecution against the apostles in the book of Acts, like in Acts chapter four and Acts chapter five, Paul's recounting of his suffering as marks of being a true apostle in 2nd Corinthians 10 to 13 and so forth. So falling back on that modest claim, not claiming certainty about every apostle, Nonetheless, this is endearing, and you say, and people often respond by saying, well, people from all different religions and all different ideologies, even secular ideologies, have been willing to die for their beliefs, and that's true. The difference here is that the disciples are claiming to have seen Jesus. There's a difference between dying for an ideology you have inherited and you believe, and dying for an empirical fact you have personally witnessed. that reduces the comparison greatly, though there are some religions you have to get into,

and I'm not going to do that here. Nonetheless, point is, this is compelling. They seem to be sincere. It doesn't seem like you would just make this up and then die for it, and that does happen in some cases. But what I want to highlight here is that the willingness to experience persecution is only one piece of the pie that gives these early testimonies about the resurrection the kind of endearing quality.

I like calling it that. I like these early testimonies. they seem believable. Okay, I like them. I feel defensive. I feel that the early testimonies about the resurrection are often interpreted cynically. It's like people are just taking a club and if they can knock off anything, they will do so. And I feel defensive of these early testimonies and the way you feel about a friend who is trustworthy and is being unjustly disbelieved.

And you say, why don't you, you know, he's a trustworthy person, this kind of feeling. That's how I feel about them. Let me explain why. First of all, the New Testament identifies by name many eyewitnesses of the resurrection, somewhere just north of 16 in the New Testament. Several women are included, which we'll talk about. Their names are written down in documents circulating while many are still alive. And so these stories are not coming up way later in a different part of the world or something.

And it's striking how the followers of Jesus are not portrayed sympathetically in these writings. They consistently lack faith, fail to understand Jesus' purposes. They abandon him in his final hour. You know, Peter, the chief apostle, denies Christ at the crucial moment multiple times. When Jesus has risen, many of them don't believe in Luke 2411 and Matthew as well. So this doesn't seem like the kind of thing that is likely to be made up. It gives a kind of, again, I say an endearing quality, a kind of credibility when the leaders of this movement are willing to look like idiots to get their message out there. This is sometimes called the

criterion of embarrassment. Basically means stories or sayings that would have embarrassed the early church are less likely to have been made up. They're more likely to have been accurate. Now, this is often challenged. At this point, though, in my thinking, as I listen to both sides, I'm really persuaded this is a powerful consideration. Let me develop this with an example that's often referenced, and that's the role of women in developing the tomb. This is often observed that you wouldn't make this up, you wouldn't say this unless it was just true because of the perception of the credibility of women in that culture, unfortunately.

And people will cite Josephus's report of a Jewish law saying, let not the testimony of women be admitted on account of the levity and boldness of their sex. And skeptics will provide answers for this. I've seen answers to this. it's kind of fascinating. You can say, you'll find people who can say, well, what if it's reverse psychology, right? And the thing is, you know, it's like, hey, I can't disprove that, right? I mean, maybe. Maybe they were that. The question we're always asking with historical

judgments is what is more probable? And it seems kind of conspiratorial to think of people in the ancient world having this elaborate plan of deception, thinking, oh, this will throw them off the scent. You know, the benefits to that would be much more long term and not really in the short term. Again, I feel that there's sometimes an undue cynicism given to these documents. Also, it's worth pointing out that this criterion of embarrassment concerns not just particular details like this, like the apostles looking foolish or the role of women, but really the entire Christian message. Because a crucified Messiah is embarrassing, but so is individual bodily resurrection in the

middle of history, as opposed to the final resurrection. That was not expected among Jews. They looked ahead to a final resurrection, not to a bodily resurrected Messiah in the middle of history. And among Gentiles, it did earn derision. For example, with Paul in Acts chapter 17. So all we're saying so far is this belief, going back to the 30s AD in a bodily resurrection, seems to have been, in the main, sincere. It doesn't seem like an intentional deception. Very unlikely that the people proclaiming this are lying and making, up this very embarrassing message that they're then dying for, in some cases at least. This, you know, we're not saying he rose, we're saying this seems to be a sincere belief that arises very early. Third point, the empty tomb. So what happens with Jesus's body? You'll hear different speculations about this. Maybe the body was simply misplaced somewhere. We just, nobody knows. Just got thrown somewhere and nobody knows. Maybe it was thrown in a pit and with other dead bodies and quickly became unrecognizable after a few days. Maybe it was eaten by wild animals

left on the cross, wild animals eat the body, that kind of thing. You'll hear these different ideas out there. But these are speculations. We don't have any direct evidence for that. Let's consider the claim that we actually have written evidence for, namely burial. Why should we accept this? Now, one criterion that we use for assessing historical reliability is early independent attestation. If a particular event is attested in multiple sources soon after its alleged occurrence, and some or all of those sources are independent, meaning they're not relying upon each other, that increases the likelihood of an event, because you're just having to explain, you know, why did all these different people get the same belief? And we've already pointed out

the tradition that Paul quotes from in 1 Corinthians 15, where there's reference to burial. It doesn't say anything about it, doesn't mention Joseph of Veramathia, but there's a reference to burial there, as we've seen that goes way back early. Jesus's burial is also attested in all four gospels. It's also attested in the sermons and acts like Paul's speech in Acts 13, for example. And then on top of all that, we have language of baptism as being buried with Christ from Paul's letters. In the 50s AD, for example, I'll put up two examples from this. Now, this imagery would not make any sense unless there was a belief very early on that Jesus was in fact, buried. And this is sometimes an overlooked point of testimony here. So traditionally,

many scholars would say that just on historical grounds, the story of Jesus' burial is very reliable. John Robinson says the burial of Jesus in the tomb is one of the earliest and best attested facts about Jesus, but more recent scholarship questions this more. And what comes up is whether we should trust the story of the burial concerning Joseph of Arimathea in the Gospels. And I have a whole video defending that story and responding to Bart Ehrman on this particular point. Airman is saying basically that the story about Joseph of Arimathea, if that's really historical, why isn't it mentioned in 1st Corinthians 15? But what I argue is that 1st Corinthians 15 is a compact creedal formula. It's extremely brief.

It's really problematic to expect information like about Joseph there. The creed doesn't include Pontius Pilate, but we don't conclude that Pilot is not historical. It doesn't mention any locations like Jerusalem. It doesn't even mention crucifixion. It just mentions that Jesus died. That's what I argued there. More recently, I read through Dale Allison's book on the resurrection to prepare for this video. He's very much against Christian apologists.

He's a Christian, but he's trying to be fair-minded, almost to a fault at times. So he's very much reacting against apologetics. Nonetheless, I found Allison pretty devastating against the idea that there's significance in the absence of Joseph in 1 Corinthians 15. He says Paul offers almost nothing on our subject except the exceedingly terse, 1 Corinthians 153 to 8. These lines are shorthand. They read more like a reduction of data, like every other creed with which we are familiar, as opposed to a comprehensive account of everything somebody new. A compact creedal formula and narrative are two different genres. That Paul doesn't include Joseph of Arimathea in 1st Corinthians 15 doesn't prove he didn't know

about him, or it's not historical, any more than the bishops at Niccia 1, not including Joseph of Varamathia in the Nicene Creed, proves they didn't know about him. Okay, when you're writing a creed, you don't put in all this extraneous information. Paul's interest in 1st Corinthians 15 is witnesses to the resurrection, not just general information. That's why he includes the information he does added on to the creed. This is a point that Craig Evans makes as well. There are many things that Paul and the creed do not mention, such as Jesus' death in Jerusalem, at the time of the Passover, at the request of the Jewish Council, at the hands of Pontius Pilate, the failure to mention these details does not mean they did not happen or were not involved. So that, I think, is pretty

decisive. This is an argument from silence to say, ah, Joseph's not in 1st Corinthians 15, and then act like that's significant. In its broad outline, and the information 1 Corinthians 15 does give, it's consistent with what we have in the four Gospels. I took this picture from Dale Allison's book, and basically we have five events here. Death, burial, resurrection on the third day, appearance to individuals, and then appearance to the 12 apostles. There are differences of detail and length, but the broad narrative is coherent that we get in 1st Corinthians 15 and the Gospels. When we look at the earliest account in the Gospels of Joseph's Burial of Jesus, that's Mark's gospel, and there's nothing that's obviously legendary or fanciful in this narrative.

scholars describe this episode as concise, unemotional, and without any bias, matter of fact, without obvious theological tendency. There's nothing inherently implausible about a particular member of the Sanhedron disagreeing with what the group as a whole has decided. I talk about that in my previous video, nor is there anything unlikely about pilot granting the request for a burial that was a common Jewish custom from Deuteronomy 21, confirmed by Josephus to be Jewish practice, around this time. We also have good reasons to think that during peacetime, the Romans often allowed for Jewish burial practices to be observed. You can find Jewish or Roman laws encouraging the bodies of criminals to be given for burial upon request. So none of that proves this happened. I'm just saying there's nothing incredible about this story. The idea of getting permission for a burial in these circumstances isn't a crazy idea. But what reasons do we have for accepting? I'm excited to talk about

this. I hope I'm not losing you out there. Lots of D. We got to. to really hammer this home. This is an important point. Why should we accept the Joseph of Arimathea story? Okay. What I think is the most powerful argument in favor of its historicity is the principle of falsifiability. If the story of Joseph wasn't true, why would the person in question who is named, put it like this, why would you name the person who did it, especially when it's a prominent, well-known member of the Sanhedron? to do that makes the story falsifiable. Think of it like this. If Mark's Gospel is written in the 60s,

so it's circulating a little more than 30 years after the events in question, that is within living memory. People hearing Mark's gospel could say, wait a second, my uncle was on the Sanhedron. There was nobody named Joseph of Arimathea. Or they could say,

I remember the death of Jesus. Joseph didn't take the body. It was just left up on the cross. You see, this is making the story falsified It's like if you imagine that you're making up a story, that in 1992, you climbed Mount Everest. And you really didn't do that by just making this up. The last thing you're going to do is say that you climbed Mount Everest with Senator Ted Kennedy or a basketball player, Dennis Rodman, because people know that person and makes it much more falsifiable

because people can say, wait a second, Ted Kennedy, the senator, he never went to climb Mount Everest. I remember that. That was only 35 years ago or something, you know. Same with Joseph Veramathia, a prominent member of the Sanhedron. If you're inventing the story, the way to do it is leave the barrier unnamed, right? Just say it was a soldier, a random person, whatever. And you might say, ah, it's 30 years later. People aren't going to remember what happened. But if you were alive in the 90s, you remember what happened was going on in the 1990s. You know, I mentioned Dennis Rodman. I like the Chicago Bulls, right? You remember stuff back then. Remember crucifixion. are public events intended to be a deterrent.

So this is not done in a private corner of Jerusalem. The whole point is to make an example out of this person for everybody to see. Now, Jesus had a lot of loyal followers, family members, his mom. People would have been very interested in him being crucified. And if you can just make things up in a public circulating document about this event, it is falsifiable. People can correct you based upon what they remember. So it's not at all crazy to think that Mark is just telling us the truth about Joseph, about some of the women who saw where the burial actually happened. Of course they would care about where, you know, Mary would care about where her son was buried,

for example. So the point is, if we have good reason to think that Joseph really did bury Jesus, that's very significant. A lot follows from that. One is that we probably know the location of the tomb. here's what one scholar says. It is extremely difficult to believe that the recollection of Joseph's name would persist in connection with something he had done while at the same time, the location where he had done it remained unknown. You don't have to agree with that point right now, but the question here is, if Jesus was in fact buried, what then happened to the body? And the story of the women discovering the empty tomb is also a very credible one for the reasons we've already discussed about the role of women in that society and the criterion of embarrassment.

Furthermore, as is often pointed out, the opponents of the early church would surely have diffused the Christian movement by producing the body if they could have. Matthew's Gospel records the Jewish leaders circulating a rumor that the disciples stole the body. Such an accusation would only be made if the body was not there to be found. Okay. So summing up here, we have strong historical reasons to think. Number one, Jesus died. Number two, people sincerely thought he rose. And number three, the body was not found. What's the best way to explain that? Well, there's been lots of proposals historically, some of, most of which we're not going to focus on, because a lot of these are pretty unlikely, are pretty out there. And they have some pretty, you know, some of them are pretty outlandish.

You've got the swoon theory. This is the idea Jesus didn't really die. He fainted or went into a coma and then revived. You've got the twin brother theory. The idea is like the movie The Prestige. If you've seen that movie, he's got a twin brother who impersonated him after his death. Yeah, the disciples stole the body. We've seen that already. The women went to the wrong tomb. If you're familiar with these discussions, you've heard a lot of these, and you're probably aware of some of the challenges with them. Most of these aren't taken as seriously today. These are not the most common things. People are aware. Roman soldiers were pretty good at killing people. You know, there's no evidence of a twin brother. That is a pretty fantastic theory and so forth. So let's focus on the best alternative explanations.

And I'm going to put forward the one that I think is, to my mind, the most plausible, naturalistic alternative explanation. Supposing Jesus did not in fact die, how do we explain these three facts? One possibility is, number one, the body was stolen by robbers. From what I'm reading, grave robbery was not totally common, but it did happen sometimes. And number, two, there's a series of hallucinations producing belief in the resurrection. Now, you may not like that one. I hope I don't annoy the skeptic out there who's saying, oh, I would choose a better naturalistic alternative. I think this is one of the best. I mean, give me a break here that I'm not choosing the worst one. It's definitely in the running for the best alternative. This is the one that Dale

Allison talks about as, you know, a possibility that, you know, basically that's the one he puts forward as the most likely. I also ran this into chat, GBT. I said, give me the best possible naturalistic explanation for these three facts, and that's what they produced. Why grave theft rather than some other non-miraculous explanation for the empty tomb? Well, if it was just a gardener moving the body, or Joseph of Varamathia himself coming back later to reclaim the body or something like that, people have put out these ideas. There's several oddities that make that less likely. Number one, why leave the stone rolled open? Something reported in all four gospels. Number two, why do it at night, which is likely to explain how it was gone by Sunday morning.

Number three, why did no one later come forward? You see, robbery being illegal is more naturally to be kept quiet after the fact. Now, even on the robbery hypothesis, certain elements of the gospel accounts are strange. For example, it seems odd to think of grave robbers as neatly folding the grave linens after plundering the tomb, but this is recorded in John's Gospel. So you could just say, well, that's a later legendary embellishment. And then, of course, you have to also regard as legendary embellishment, the placement of the soldiers outside the tomb referenced in Matthew's Gospels. you have to say, and now that didn't really have. That's not. So in other words, you have to make this

proposal work, you have to shave off various elements in the Gospels and focus on the historical core, but it's possible, you know, you can't disprove a grave robbery. I don't have a missile in a bazooka to shoot at that hypothesis and to sink it to the bottom of the ocean. How can you disprove such a thing, right? So it's possible. On historical grounds, you can't say it's impossible that people stole, But here's the challenge. That only explains the empty tomb, not the people claiming to have seen Jesus bodily. Remember, by the way, bodily resurrection was not going to be expected in the middle of history here. The challenge is going to be explaining both.

Remember, we've got to explain all three facts, the empty tomb, but also the rise of this belief. Here's how Entie Wright puts it. Neither the empty tomb by itself nor the appearances by themselves could have generated the early Christian belief. belief. The empty tomb alone would be a puzzle and a tragedy. Settings of an apparently alive Jesus by themselves would have been classified as visions or hallucinations. So in other words, mere grave robbery only gets you halfway, arguably not halfway, not even that, it only gets you part of the way. You have to add on an additional explanation of hallucinations to get the rest of the way, to explain why are people believing they have seen Jesus bodily. Now regarding

hallucinations, there's a lot of problems with the idea of group hallucinations. This is very contested. People get into this. Basically, put it simply, cut through a lot to say, hallucinations are by their nature, a personal, private experience in your own mind. So group hallucinations are, so better than going that route. Here's, I think, the better way to go. You say something like this. Mary Magdalene has her own personal grief-induced hallucination. She is convinced she sees Jesus. Okay. The robbers have stolen the body. She and potentially others, but at least her, goes to the tomb,

empty tomb, and she thinks she has an overcome with grief, she has a hallucination or some kind of experience she thinks. She becomes sincerely convinced she sees Jesus, and word gets out about this. Other disciples hear about it. And the rumor of that, combined with the empty tomb, combined with recollection of Jesus' predictions of rising from the dead, trigger Peter to also have a grief-induced hallucination of Jesus.

Now, he's convinced, and this causes a snowball. Okay. Others have experiences. They are thinking they have seen Jesus as well. It's like a contagion, you know. Maybe they're not all hallucinations per se, but this belief somehow spreads. Okay. And what's pointed out, now, now, one of the challenges,

here is this doesn't explain the group visions of Jesus reported in the New Testament. So on this hypothesis, you have to say that because those come later, they're not in Mark, those are legendary accretions as well. Regarding 1st Corinthians 156 and the 500 who are reported to have seen the risen Christ. You have to say, yeah, that's early. So it's not a later legend. But we don't know anything about this. Not one of these people is named, therefore we can't place any weight on 1st Corinthians 156 and the 500. Now, I think that's unduly skeptical because the language, most of whom are still alive, appears to assume knowledge of these individuals, even if Paul doesn't name them. It suggests they could be named. Because he wouldn't say that if he had no

idea who these people were, but for the sake of argument, because it is contested and we don't have much information, Chuck 1, Corinthians 15, 6 out the window as well. Then you get to the next verse where you have another group appearance. Then Jesus appeared to all the apostles, and we do know their names, unlike the 500. And unlike the 500 mentioned, we do have potential corroboration of this in the accounts, for example, in Matthew and Luke, where Jesus appears to the apostles. So you have to find some way to explain this. Now, I wanted to try to be fair, so I ran this by chat GPT as well and said, what's the best way to explain this? And Chad GPT says group expectation and retrospective harmonization. Quote, even though group hallucinations are extremely rare or possibly

non-existent in clinical literature, collective belief in the risen Jesus might have formed not from simultaneous group visions, but from individual experiences later recast as shared events, especially in oral tradition. So if you didn't follow that, think of it like this. You might, Now, here, you might say this seems extremely tendentious, but on the other hand, a bodily resurrection is not easy to believe either. Whatever the explanation is for the origins of Christianity, it's something very unusual. I think every fair-minded person gets into this kind of realizes, whoa, this is crazy. So let's grant for the sake of argument that these group appearances are something like what ChatGPT mentioned and others have proposed, namely Mary and or Peter have a hallucination or vision. and then others are convinced, and then over time, group belief becomes recast as group experience.

Let's suppose that's right. At this point, we still have to explain James, the brother of Christ, and Paul. Because these two individuals are not within the chain of influence of Mary or Peter. So they're less likely to be caught up in kind of mass hysteria or something like that. Let's talk about these two people. Let's talk about James. This is the brother of Jesus, James, the judge. half-brother of Jesus is not the same person as the two original disciples named James.

Okay. Paul records that after these other appearances, 1 Corinthians 15-7, he appeared to James. Sandwiched between the 500 and the apostles, there's this appearance to James. Now, we're not told a lot about this. It's just two words in the Greek. He appeared to James. But mere brevity is not a strike against this very early report. recall that in Galatians 2, Paul had personal correspondence with James. Paul knew James. He spent time

with him. Okay, imagine you're Paul. You were persecuting the church, you saw Jesus, now you're talking to James. It's probably going to come up that he's reported to have seen Jesus as well. Okay, Paul and James are probably not talking about the weather. They're probably talking about Jesus. Paul's report in 1st Corinthians 1517 about James is not a secondhand rumor that he just picked up somewhere in the telephone game. This is an individual that he knows personally. Furthermore, an appearance to James would explain a lot. Recall that during Jesus' earthly ministry, Jesus' brothers didn't believe in him, as you can see in Mark 3 and John 7 on the screen. Now suddenly, right after the resurrection, you turn the page into the book of Acts,

And you find the followers of Christ listed, and guess what? Suddenly, Jesus' brothers are among the believers. By Acts 15, James and Acts 21 as well, James has become the leader of the Jerusalem Church. In Galatians 2, Paul reports that very early on in church history, James is regarded as one of the pillars alongside Peter and John. As we've already said, there's extra-biblical corroboration that James is an eventual martyr in the right. writings of Josephus, and that's recorded in later reports that then get reported by Eusebius, the church history. So think about this. Paul and Peter are out preaching, okay, who's in charge of the headquarter mothership church back in Jerusalem? Who's steering the ship? James, the brother of

Christ, who then becomes a martyr. The guy who didn't believe until after the crucifixion of Christ, or at least during the earthly ministry of Christ, doesn't seem to believe in Christ from everything we can tell. And then there's a sudden turnaround from unbeliever to pillar right within the window of time that would be well explained by an appearance of the risen Christ. One scholar writes, it might be said that if there were no record of an appearance to James, the Lord's brother in the New Testament, we should have to invent what in order to account for his post-resurrection, conversion, and rapid advance. Not everyone agrees with that, but I will say that a majority of even critical scholars, accept the idea that James had an experience that convinced him of the risen Christ,

even if they don't think it was the risen Christ. They think he had an experience. So the point is, now you need to have another hallucination or some other kind of explanation beyond that, because James is a very unlikely candidate for getting caught up in the hype among the disciples because of Peter and Mary Magdalene. He's not one of the disciples at that point from everything we can tell. And then, of course, you know what's coming next, and that's Paul, who's a similar story of a turdine. turnaround, right? And he gives his own testimony of seeing Christ. He's not among the original disciples. You wouldn't have expected him to see Jesus. Hallucinations are less likely when the thing that is being hallucinated is contrary to expectation. And so the point is, this is a lot of

hallucinations or some other kind of experiences that are unexpected, all leading different people to the same unexpected belief for which many of them are willing to die. And what I'm suggesting is, unless your prior beliefs absolutely rule out miracles. If you're looking at the historical evidence, at a certain point this question arises, are all these hallucinations following a grave robbery really more likely than a miracle? At what point, as you're studying,

do the scales tip from like 6040 to, now I added on a few more hallucinations, now it's like 45, 55 the other way, right? In other words, to be a sincerely open-minded and truth-seeking person, we should be willing to consider this question. What if the reason that a bunch of different people claimed to see Jesus and were willing to die for it is because they simply saw Jesus? What if the reason the body wasn't found is because it was, in fact, resurrected and is now currently in heaven as we speak? Many scholars who look into this conclude that is the

best conclusion from the historical data, and the reason it isn't more common is because of bias against miracles. That's Mike Lycona's conclusion at the end of his meticulous book, which if you want another good one to read through, you can see a little bit how thick this one is. He goes through all the evidence. It's very fair-minded. And what he's saying is, the end of it is, the only legitimate reasons for rejecting the resurrection hypothesis are philosophical and theological in nature. In other words, you know, it's like what he's basically kind of saying is from the data alone, it just looks, if you believe miracles are possible, it really looks like that's the best way to account for the facts.

NT Wright draws a similar conclusion. This is another thick one that, though it's so, if you're going to read any book in your life, this is one of those that's worth reading. I mean, it's, this is such an important topic, you know. And he, again, he's a fair-minded, good historian, totally credible scholar. And his conclusion is, if we were faced with some other historical problem, which had brought us to a secure and interrelated pair of conclusions, and if we were looking for a fact or event to explain them both, and if we discovered something which explained them as thoroughly and

satisfyingly as the bodily resurrection of Jesus explains the empty tomb and the meetings, then we would accept it without a moment's hesitation. In other words, summarize it like this. If you're open to a miracle happening ever, this one seems like a good candidate. It's concerning the most stunning figure in human history. It has spawned the world's largest and most diverse religion. Here's the way I like to put it. If you believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, that's not a problem you need to explain.

That is itself an explanation that makes sense of a lot of historical data. Now, can you prove it? No. Oh, man, I'm so afraid of going too far. I don't want to be the apologist who's kind of like triumphantly declaring going way beyond the data. But the thing is, I also don't want to shirk back from stating it as strong as it needs to be stated. Because it seems to me, I can't prove it. You know, we're dealing with probabilities here.

but it genuinely seems to me that barring philosophical bias against a miraculous explanation, that explanation actually makes the best sense of the data. And, you know, for me personally, factoring into that, surely is my perception of an endearing, credible nature of these witnesses as well, no doubt. That's why I try to argue for that. At the very least, it's worth taking a careful look, because there is absolutely no thought as happy and enchanting and wonderful and enthralling as the possibility that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

That's why most of my work on this topic hasn't been historical arguments, but rather theological reflection on the nature of Jesus' resurrection body, which is endlessly fascinating because on the one hand he can eat fish, on the other hand, his body will never decay. Think about that. It's a totally new type of reality, and I have videos about that. So I hope this video, I sincerely hope this video to an open-minded skeptic would be, you know, I hope it would make you say, wow, okay, yeah, I want to look into this more. For those who are followers of Christ, I hope this would be as nourishing and comforting and encouraging to you as it is to me. At the end of the day, this event really looks like it happened.

It really looks like a man got out of a tomb. That's the best way. You can't prove it, I don't think, but I think it's the best way to make sense of the historical data. Let me know what you think. Longer video. Thanks for watching. Hope it was helpful. Let me know what you think in the comments.