Within Reason - #107 Dale Allison - Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Dale Allison is an American historian and Christian theologian. His areas of expertise include the historical Jesus, the Gospel of Matthew, Second Temple Jewish literature, and the history of the interpretation and reception of the Bible. Allison is the Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary (2013- ). (Wikipedia) By Dale Allison's book, The Resurrection of Jesus, here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To what extent do you think a historian can either prove or disprove the resurrection of Jesus? So if by history you mean that you can prove that God raised Jesus from the dead, then I don't think so. I think that's mixing two categories, theology and history. I think the historian can say certain things. the historian could say, for example, the tomb was probably empty or the tomb probably wasn't empty. That's independent of a theological judgment. You can also make arguments about who maybe saw Jesus or thought they saw Jesus. But part of the theme of my book is that apologists and skeptics typically reach too far. So while I start out the book by saying, I'm perfectly happy

to say as a Christian, I think God raised Jesus from the dead. This is not something that I could prove historically to other people. There are parts of the New Testament or claims in the New Testament that we can address as historians. But at the end of the day, I think the skeptic can be reasonable as a skeptic. I think the Christian can be reasonable as a skeptic. I think the Christian can be reasonable as a skeptic and it's just the case that history does not give people as much as they want so the skeptic wants to be able to say it's ridiculous to think that anything happened here the apologist wants to say well i can show this that and the other thing and the best hypothesis for that is that jesus rose from the dead or god raised jesus from the dead uh i'm in the middle

on this one. I just don't think either side is persuasive. I actually think at the end of the day that people's worldviews are configuring the data, whether they know it or not. But I also think the data is pliable enough that it can be configured reasonably in more than one way. Again, that will depend on your worldview. Yeah, your book, The Resurrection of Jesus, is a master class of scholarship. recommend it to everybody who has even a passing interest in Jesus and Christianity. But people will listen to what you've just said and think, okay, I understand that you can't historically prove a resurrection. You can't sort of, you know, look through the lens of history and see Jesus walking out of the tomb. But we can know certain things with a level of certainty that is standard of

historical reporting. So ideas like Jesus was crucified. He was put to death by the Romans on a cross. Ideas like his early followers started to believe that they'd seen him after they died. Facts like the persecution of early Christians. Christians will point to things like this and say that these are historical facts. And although we can't prove a resurrection, we can look to the resurrection as the best explanation of those facts. What do you think of that approach? So first of all, you are correct.

Although I would add that there's always a spectrum here. That is, some things are more probable than others. Some things are highly unlikely. Some things are highly probable. Some things in the middle are 50-50. So not everything is the same. Not everything is like Jesus was crucified. I think that's a slam dunk.

I think that everybody should agree with that. But when it comes to something like the empty tomb, there are arguments on both sides. I think that the arguments for an empty tomb are slightly better than those on the other side. But that's not a slam dunk, and I realize I could be wrong, and I know reasonable people disagree with me. It's the same thing for Joseph of Arimathea. I am conservative, I guess, about this one. I think it likely that somebody named Joseph of Aramathia had something to do with the burial of Jesus.

But, again, there are well-informed, good-hearted people on the other side who take a different view. So part of my problem is that I don't think in terms of yes or no. I think in terms of a scale of probability. And with regard to things having to do with the resurrection of Jesus, there is a scale here. So, you know, I can tell you what I think is probable, but then I would also have to sit back and say, well, is this highly probable or just a little bit better than, you know, 50-50? That's sort of thing. But again, so let's say as an historian, you decide the tomb was empty. Well, what do you do with that? we know, we really do know, that there were people who robbed tubes in antiquity, not just for whatever wealth might be in them, but people used bodies for different purposes.

And we have lots of markers from antiquity on graves in the Roman world, Greek world, Jewish world, which tell people not to enter here and not to remove bodies. The reason they're there is because people did move bodies. We also know from magical papyri that sometimes people used body parts and sometimes pieces of humans who died violently in, you know, an incantation recipe, for example. So the point is, we do know that people stole bodies. Some people like to steal bodies of people who died violently. So how can the Christian or anybody show how the tomb got empty? I think that we're often trapped in a sort of Sherlock Holmes narrative where if we're smart enough, we can figure it out.

but I don't think that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for whatever it is you want to say about the New Testament. So my own view is that people who are going to affirm that Jesus rose from the dead aren't going to be doing it on historical grounds. By the way, just as a matter of fact, that's not why most Christians who go to church think Jesus rose from the dead or why they profess that. they didn't spend time studying all the data disinterestedly and conclude, oh, yeah, it's more likely than not. That's not what happened. The way to think about this is that the resurrection of Jesus for a Christian is part of a worldview.

It serves a function within this worldview. It has certain theological functions. And it's sort of, so to speak, the whole picture that's going to make this welcome. or the whole picture, if you have a different worldview, that's going to make it unwelcome. And it's very rare, I know some people, but it's very rare for somebody to say, you know, I don't care whether Jesus rose from the dead or not.

I'm not interested. I'd just like to look at the data and see what it says. But I am convinced that at the end of the day, you will be disappointed because there was nothing in the ancient sources that shows you that the Christians must have been totally deluded. But there's nothing there that shows you they must have been 100% correct. Just think of other events in the Gospels. How do you prove that a bunch of pigs at some point in Jesus' ministry went off a cliff?

How do you show that? Well, that's a miracle story. It's very interesting. If it happened, people would remember it. But there's no way to prove it. It's just a text in a book surviving from antiquity. And I don't know how anyone could say that never happened. I don't know how you could disprove the story.

I don't know how you can prove the story. So there are things involved with the resurrection of Jesus that I don't think you can prove. Now, having said that, I actually am conservative here as an historian. I think Jesus probably was buried. I don't think he was thrown in a pile or left up on a cross. I think he was buried. It's kind of mysterious to me. But again, I think somebody named Joseph of Arimathea was involved.

This is not just a total fabrication. I also am inclined to think that some people went to visit Jesus soon after his crucifixion, which is what people do with the recently dead. They go visit the graves soon afterwards. when they can, and for whatever reason, they found it empty. I also argue in the book that the belief Jesus rose from the dead wasn't something that sort of gradually developed over six months through reflection and thinking about Old Testament text. I think it was probably there from the first week. So if you add all these things together, you'll say, well, I'm very

conservative and traditional about these things, but there are two problems. One is that I had my bets, I don't know these things. I think they're more probable than not, more likely than not, and I recognize others disagree. I also don't see how one can put these together and just say Jesus rose from the dead, or that's the best explanation. I don't think you have to be an imbecile to think well. One possibility is that there were two robbers and then a couple of people hallucinated Jesus and that got the ball rolling. I think you can make some sort of case like that if you want to. So that's why people on both sides just like what I'm doing here because I'm not saying this is all obviously legendary from beginning to end and I'm not saying

yeah, obviously we can show all this happened and draw theological conclusions or say Jesus rose from the dead. I just don't see that. So, on the one hand, I seem to be conservative. On the other hand, I'm a skeptic with regard to how far you can carry your interpretation. Just from the data. I myself, I love what you're doing for that reason, because I'm not a Christian. But like you, I think that, you know, it's not like a mark of intelligence, which side. you fall down on this. It's quite clearly irresolvable when you look at it from a historical perspective. But despite that, it is incredibly interesting. And there are so many avenues that you can dive into and considerations that don't immediately spring to mind when you read these texts. So one, for example, that I hadn't even really thought about until I read your book

was about the list of appearances that we're told about. We're told that Jesus appears to Peter. we're told that he appears to the 12. We're told, in a few narrative cases, we're told about the Road to Amas, doubting Thomas. And what struck me is when you pointed out that Peter, who is the most important of the apostles of Jesus,

or at least of the original 12 disciples, and presumably will have had one of the most important, maybe even one of the first visions of Jesus, every time the appearance to Peter is mentioned, it's just kind of brushed over. Of course, Paul famously says that he appeared to Seifus as part of his whole scheme. But that makes sense. He's just listing names.

But even in the gospel accounts, it's just something that's mentioned. And interestingly, as well, at the end of Mark's gospel, the short-ending, before you have the stuff that was added on later, you have this instruction to go and tell Peter and the disciples. Whereas when it gets to Matthew's Gospel, the angel says go and tell the disciples. It doesn't specify Peter. So what do you think is going on with Peter in the appearance to Peter specifically in the resurrection narratives? So if I had to bet, I wouldn't bet against 1st Corinthians 15, 3 and following. Paul, I think, is passing on a tradition, and I see no reason to doubt it.

And Paul himself in Galatians indicates that he spent time with Peter, so he must know some things about Peter. I have a suspicion. Of course, you can't prove it. There have been all sorts of theories. maybe later Christian, maybe there, maybe there was something in the account that was regarded as heretical, for example, and so it dropped out. There are all sorts of possibilities here, but one possibility, which I don't think I've ever found in the literature, but it seems to be a good possibility, is that Peter had a vision of Jesus or saw him briefly, and that was it. That is, nothing was said, and there was no story to tell. That is, he appeared to Peter would be the end of the narrative.

So it's nothing from which you could have a story developed. Now, one of the things I do in my book is I take seriously these reports from all times and places of people having encounters with the newly departed, you know, thinking that somebody has come back and that they see this person. Well, most of them are brief and most of them don't involve. any verbal communication. So if Peter had a vision or something like a vision, there would be any story. It's just I saw him. And so I can't prove that. I don't know how likely or probable it is. But you're right. It seems weird that you get a story about Mary Magdalene of all people, right? And then you get the story about the appearance to the 12, but nothing about Peter. So all we can do is guess, but I think the scenario I just gave you is a plausible guess.

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Yeah, I think it's also worth pointing out that where we like to imagine Jesus' appearances to his disciples after his death as very physical, and some gospel accounts seem to go out of their way to indicate the physicality of Jesus. We have to remember that, like, Poole also says, you know, last of all, he appeared to me. And the way in which Jesus seemed to appear to Poole was something much more visionary, like a flash of light in the sound of a voice. It wasn't like an embodied person walking on the long road to Damascus and sort of shaking his hand. And so Paul at least seemed willing to include these kind of visionary experiences as Jesus is appearing to people.

But the most sort of evocative and the most sort of startling of the things that Paul says in 1st Corinthians 15 when he's listing the people that Jesus appears to is this casual mention to the fact that Jesus appeared. to 500 people, to more than 500 people, or as above 500 people, and is never mentioned again. A lot of people use this as an apologetical tool. 500 people saw the risen Jesus, and it specified, Paul specifies that some of them are still alive, so presumably they could go and be interrogated. This is clear evidence of a, you don't get mass hallucinations of that kind. We talk about grief-induced hallucinations, but 500 people seeing Jesus all at one time, what's going on there? So I don't think we know what's going on there.

And I have friends who are evangelicals or friends in the apologetical community and they don't like at all what I have to say about this, but I can't infer anything from a passing reference to an event I know nothing about. So I don't know who these 500 people were. I don't know why they were gathered. Why were they gathered together in the first,

place. Had somebody, you know, hyped the crowd up and got them going? I don't know. How did this work? Was Jesus in the clouds? Did Jesus, you know, stand there and everybody came by and shook his hand? Could everybody see him up close? How many of these people knew him well or knew him at all? Where did this take place? When did it take place? We don't have any answers to these questions. And what you can do when you're addressing this argument is you can simply say, hey, Roman Catholic literature says that Mother Mary appeared at Zytoon, Egypt in 1968, and she was seen by hundreds of thousands of people. So if that's all you had, if that's all you had, would you say, well, obviously, it's true. No, you would say, this is weird. Let's find out.

what it's all about. And if you investigate Zaytune, I don't think it's mass hallucination. I personally think it's something we know not want. I think it's a very weird event. But the Protestant who doesn't want this to be married isn't going to be persuaded by a simple sentence this crowd repeatedly saw Jesus. So how does it work with the 500 in Paul? I just don't think it works. And of course, there are other events that you can find in Roman Catholic literature where they will say, oh, everybody at Fatima saw such and such, right? They saw the miracle of the Sundance, and it must be God. Well, just a sentence doesn't do anything.

You have to investigate what the heck was Fatima. What was it all about and so on? but the point here is that there are multitude claims about collective appearances and if you don't belong inside the group that is sponsoring this appearance you don't say oh obviously this is true because multiple people saw it you say no what is this let's think about it and when we try to think about the appearance to the 500 i don't have any data now it might It might have been really interesting. If I were there, maybe I would say, whoa, what the heck is this?

Or that's really Jesus. But I don't know what happened. How do you picture this concretely? A bunch of people in circles around a guy on a mountain? What is this? I just have no idea what it is. And I think other people are bluffing when they tell us they know what it is. Sometimes they'll say, well, Paul knew some of these people.

Okay, fine. What does that mean? I know people who were at Zaytun, Egypt. Right? I've read tons of firsthand accounts by these people. That doesn't show anything. If I were, let's say, a Coptic Orthodox Christian and Egyptian Christian, I probably would look at this and say, yeah, this is Mary.

But since I don't belong to that community, I look at this. and say, that's very strange. I don't know what this is all about. So, you know, we should be even-handed. If we're not going to, as Protestant apologists, if we're not going to look at one-line claims about Mary and say, oh, that means Mary appeared. How can we look at a one-line claim in Paul?

I don't get this one. You mentioned briefly this interesting subtext that the word for more than, I mean, it says that he appeared to more than 500 people, the word more than, which in Greek is something like epano, I don't know how to pronounce it exactly, can mean above, in the sense of like when put before a number, it means like, you know, above 500, more than 500, you know, above 500 people. but there is this sort of implicit undertone that it could also mean something like above 500 as in some kind of vision in the sky I thought that was really interesting too I mean I've spoken to a lot of people about this and a lot of Greek speakers in particular tell me

like that is interesting but it's almost certainly being used in the other way but I just wanted sort of how much stock you place in that consideration so I just raised it as a possibility I didn't regard it as the most likely reading, but there are a couple of Greek texts, ancient old Greek texts that do think of it this way. So, yeah, of course it's possible, but on the spectrum, I don't think it's more likely than the other option. But it does make you wonder because I know of Christians who have passed around pictures of Jesus in the clouds, and they thought, yeah, this is really here.

him. You can go on the internet and Google pictures of Jesus in the clouds. And so there are some people who think this. Again, I don't know anything about this crowd. By the way, one of the things we do know from Marian apparitions is that when you have a crowd and you actually interview people very carefully, you will often find that they're not seeing the exact same thing. Or you can have a crowd where most people say, oh, that was Mary, but somebody else will say, well, I couldn't quite make out a figure there, or I didn't see anything, or it came, you know, in and out of focus. So if you interviewed these 500 people, how do you have any idea that they would all say the exact thing? Same thing. Again, I don't understand it. In Matthew 28,

Jesus appears to the 11 and Matthew says but some doubted okay well how many of the 500 doubted if some of the 11 had doubts and by the way how were they resolved how long did they last

and so we don't have any idea but Paul doesn't say in 1st Corinthians 15 he doesn't say Jesus appeared to the 12 but some doubted he just says Jesus appeared to the 12 but Matthew says some doubted. So Paul says G has appeared to more than 500. Well, okay. But to be clear, although it doesn't have the

clearly it doesn't have the apologetical weight that a lot of people think it does. However, some people say, oh, well, does that mean that Paul just made it up or something or was trying to prove a point? I think that you would be equally suspicious of the idea that this isn't grounded in any kind of historical event. So I don't think that Paul is making this up. This just doesn't fit my idea of Paul. This was some event in my judgment. But again, I just, as a conscientious historian,

I don't know how to get a handle on it. So I don't think Paul is making that up. But more than that, I can't tell you. Paul isn't there, which is an important thing to point out, is that Paul is not one of these witnesses. He's recounting the experience of somebody else, which I think this comes up a lot when we fail to pull apart two important questions. One is, did it happen?

And the other is, did the person writing about it think that it happened, whether or not it actually did? That comes up in a few different areas, I think. So we've been talking about 1 Corinthians, chapter, And this is right at the beginning, Paul lists some of the people that Jesus appears to. And it seems like he's quoting an earlier, an earlier sort of schema that has been passed down. Although it does end in his own vision, so it's unclear where that starts and ends. But we've kind of gone through two of them.

He says that he appeared after rising from the dead, that he appeared to Seifus, that's Peter, and then to the 12, as you've already mentioned. I've got a couple of questions here. Firstly, isn't Peter one of the 12? So are these two separate occurrences and why would they be separated out in this way? And secondly, did Jesus appear to the 12? I thought by this point one of them had betrayed him and gone off and hung himself. Yeah, so I think that the expression the 12 is just used as the title for a group. So one of the things I observe in my book is that you can refer to, there are examples, of a number that represents a group, and even as people drop out or join, they still keep the number.

So I think 12 just means the circle around Jesus that he selected. I wouldn't do anything with that, although there have been or were in the middle of the 20th century, some German scholars who use this. to argue that, well, the story of Judas betraying Jesus must be a fiction. If Jesus appeared to the 12, Judas must have been among them. And he must have apostatized later. And after he did so, then they wrote him back until the Free Easter period. I think that's convoluted. And I'm just content to say this is the title for a group.

So, yeah, Matthew is more conscientious. he says the 11, but there are textual variance which say 12, which show people thought, you know, is perfectly appropriate to speak of the 12 in this connection. There's also the usage of the 12 possibly including the women that were alongside Jesus. There seem to be instances where the women likely would have been present and yet they're still referred to as just like the 12 or like a group title. It is a little bit strange as a modern reader to think, well, why would he say the 12 if it was known that there were only 11 of the disciples? by then, but this usage does seem sort of crop up every now and again in the Gospels? Yeah, yeah, but so people in antiquity are much less exact with numbers than we are. So we live in a technological society.

We grow up with watches and clocks, and when we use numbers, we tend to use them accurately. If you look at the Bible, the Bible is full of three. and sevens and 40s, and way more than should be there. It's just because three means a short period, seven's a little longer, and 40 means, yeah, that's a long period of time. So you fast for 40 days, Noah's flood, fast, you know, lasts for 40 days. There were 5,000 people in the wilderness, you know, in Mark 6. Well, nobody counted them.

There was no turn style where they, you know, ran up the numbers and it was exactly 5,000. So, and you're actually right. My own view is that when Jesus walked around Galilee, he wasn't just followed by 12 guys. I think there's a larger crowd there. I think some of them are women. There must also be tag-alongs, people who are interested in him, even though they are not members of the 12. But the gospel writers have no interest. in that. That's not the sort of antiquarian interest that they have. There's no theological point

to the 12, beyond the 12, but the 12 is really interesting because it stands for Israel and functions in a certain way. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner, Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee. Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Samburg, Kate McKinnon, and Alison Janney, a hilarious new comedy, filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. Now, again, we've been talking here about Paul's sort of list of people that Jesus appear to,

but there isn't much sort of narrative detail given here. In the Gospels themselves, we get a bit more of a fleshed out vision of what Jesus was doing after, after his resurrection. One of the things that jumps out to me is the fact that Mark's gospel, our earliest gospel, it seems like originally didn't have the ending that you will currently find in most Bibles, and that it ended with the women at the tomb, fleeing and saying nothing because they were afraid. And the resurrection is predicted. Go ahead to Galilee. That's where you're going to be Jesus. Now, that means that in the original version of Mark, if we assume there wasn't some other long-ending that was lost somehow, at least what we have of Mark, there are no post-resurrection appearances. Matthew and Luke's Gospel, which are the next Gospels that we get, there are a few resurrection appearances.

In Matthew's Gospel, they go ahead to Galilee, and there they meet Jesus. And in Luke's Gospel, the same thing happens, although now it's been moved to Jerusalem instead of Galilee. And by the time you get to John's gospel, the latest gospel, you have, I think, four instances of appearances of Jesus in various ways, the story of Mary Magdalene, mistaking him for the gardener, you get doubting Thomas. So in other words, it seems to me that the later the reports get, the more fanciful and numerous the appearances get too. And this idea has been used to criticize the veracity of the gospel accounts. I think they call it the mythological development view, which shows that as time goes on, the resurrection. The resurrection. directions start appearing and the resurrection appearance start appearing and start getting more fanciful. Again, I just want to sort of how much stock you place in this and whether that is a worthwhile consideration. Well, so first of all, I don't know how the gospel of Mark ended. So it's very popular today to say that the gospel ended at 16.8. I think it's clear that the additional endings that we have are secondary. But I think it's not implausible that there was

some story beyond 16.8, and in fact, this is an interesting thing to think about, but if you could take John 21, the last chapter of John, which sounds kind of like an add-on, which takes place in Galilee, which is very strange, because everything in Chapter 20 is in and around Jerusalem, if you took John 21 and stuck it at the end of Mark, and just made a few revisions taking out things that are obviously from the evangelist, the fourth evangelist, it would fit pretty well. It's just not implausible that the ending is missing. For example, there is a passion gospel from the first part of the second century, known as the gospel of Peter, and it has an account of the resurrection, and then it ends in mid-sentence. It clearly lost the last

page. And if you've worked with documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls, you'll realize that sometimes that it's the front of the book that's missing or the back of the book that's missing, those tend to be the most damaged parts. Actually, this is true. Before we submitted our books through email, we used to send in manuscripts, pages. And one of the last manuscripts I sent in And two weeks later, I got an email from the publisher saying, can you send us the last page? Because we've lost it. And I always think of that. I think of the Gospel of Mark because one of my last, you know, my last page was missing.

So it's not implausible. I agree that these stories are, so to speak, getting better as time goes. on. But you can see this with everything in the Gospels, almost everything. You know, Joseph of Arimathea ends up founding the Church of England and taking the Holy Grail, you know, to Britain and so on. So this is par for the course. But having said that, my inclination is to, and I argue this in the book. Some people might find this too skeptical. think Matthew's account of Jesus appearing to the 11 in Galilee, and then Luke's appearance of Jesus to the 11 in Jerusalem, and then Luke's appearance to the 11, and then what you have

in John also. So in Matthew, Luke, and John, and if you want to, you'll include the long ending of Mark, I think they're all, I think they grow out of the same story. I think that they are developments of a sort of primitive proto commission. And in the book, I show all the elements that they have in common, including interestingly, the notion of doubt. So I think there is probably a story. And you also have to remember this. You know, people like stories. and people aren't theologians. That is, they're not satisfied with creeds. They want stories. I think it's wildly implausible that the earliest Christians went around saying, well, Jesus did miracles. And then later on, they created all the miracle stories.

I think the generalization, Jesus did miracles, came out of people's knowledge of stories about Jesus, and they like to tell these miracle stories. I would think that even though Paul doesn't give us the appearance to the 500, somebody must have turned it into a story at some point, so that this reference is a digest or resume of a story that, if it was formed, probably took multiple forms. I think that we have three or four different editions or descendants of this original story.

So people like to tell stories. They don't start out with dogmatic lines. The dogmatic lines tend to generalize from stories and experiences. So here's something a little bit weird that John 21, like you say, that the final chapter of John seems a little bit out of place with the rest of John's gospel. And some people have suggested it was either written by the same person or same group of people, but later, or maybe written by somebody else entirely for all kinds of different reasons. But specifically, I mean, there are a few weird things like, you know, Jesus in John chapter 20, they're in Jerusalem. And he says, go out and forgive people's sins and spread the message. And then chapter 21, they're fishing in Galilee.

They're just, you know, back to business as usual, a little bit strange. What's even stranger is we then have this story of Jesus coming over and performing this miracle of the miraculous catching a fish where he tells Simon Peter to throw the net over the side and he catches way more fish than he should have been able to, which is a really interesting story. But it also shows up in Luke chapter 5. That is like during Jesus's ministry, his earthly ministry, the same kind of miracle. We've also got a sort of reference in Mark chapter 1 when Jesus first calls Simon Peter to him sort of finding him fishing. So we've got this kind of story of Jesus finding Simon Peter while he's fishing and doing something. And it seems to have maybe happened at least twice and maybe the same miracle was performed on two occasions. It's a little bit strange that in John 21, the disciples don't go, oh, look, he's done it again. So is there something that suspicious about the fact that this similar story shows up before and after the resurrection?

So again, you're talking about the story in Luke 5. So in Matthew 4 and Mark 1, Jesus just calls Peter and three other disciples and they're fishing. But there's nothing about a miraculous catch of fish. But Peter does have this, or Mark, I'm sorry, Luke has this story of Peter being called, and this miraculous catch of fish. Now, if you just line up the parallels between John 21 and Luke 5, again, I think it's the same story. I think it's the same story. And I think Luke knows the story in John 21.

I don't think he knows the gospel of John, but I think he knows the story in 21. And the problem for him is that it's an appearance story in Galilee. But he, at the end of his books, wants everything in Jerusalem. That's part of his narrative, and he wants to start Acts in Jerusalem. There's no place to stick a Galilee, an episode in Galilee from there. So I think he's pulled pieces of this story he knows, which is about a resurrection appearance in Galilee, and then moved it into five because he likes part of the story. So I don't think it happened twice.

I think here you're dealing with the editorial freedom of one of the evangelists. Do you think that that gives us reason? to be suspicious of these accounts, the fact that there seems to be an editorial willingness to chop things up and move them around like this? Well, I just think that happens all the time with all storytellers. That's just what they do. So I don't think any of the evangelists are sitting at their desks saying to themselves, oh gosh, I want to say this, but I can't because I know it happened, you know, not the way

I wish it would have happened. I don't think that's going on. But that's one of the reasons that my main approach to the Gospels, not my exclusive approach, but my main approach or my initial primary approach is not to try to base too much on one particular story or one particular saying. I tend to look for patterns, things that repeat across the sources,

and that makes me more confident. Just to illustrate for your audience, Jesus tells parables in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and in all the sources that they're using. And I think it's safe to say that Jesus composed parables. And in fact, if Jesus didn't compose parables, I would say the sources are so poor that we just need to be doing something else

with our spare time, okay? Right. But that's very different than saying oh, I can prove that this particular parable goes back to Jesus. That's very difficult and problematic. I prefer to look at these things as a group and then to ask, are there things that are repeating within this group that I could plausibly associate with Jesus? I do the same thing with the exorcism stories and any number of themes in the Gospels.

So it's precisely because I'm aware that the evangelists aren't just writing everything. verbatim as they heard it and making sure that there's nothing but pure history here, that I tend to approach the text this way. So to what extent do you think, to what extent do you think we can know the genre of post-resurrection appearance narratives? That is, are these authors trying to recount history, or are they intentionally writing essentially mythological stories, which I always like to stress, is not the same thing as fiction. For C.S. Lewis, his conversion to Christianity came about when he became convinced that Christianity

was the true myth. Mythology is a sort of genre of its own. When I look, for example, as a story like The Road to Amas, which shows up exclusively in Luke's gospel and has two disciples, one named as Cleopas, one unnamed, they meet Jesus, they don't recognize him. They walk for miles with him while he's explaining the scriptures to them. They don't know who he is. They sit down, he breaks bread, and suddenly they recognize him, and they know that it's Jesus. Maybe this is a reporting of a story where Jesus's resurrected body looked different, and that maybe when he broke the bread, he sort of said something as if like, hey, remember this one, guys? And maybe something like that went on. But to me, the sort of strangeness that would have been evident to anybody reading it

at the time, like the composer of the story will have known that it was strange to think that they don't recognize him until they broke the bread. It kind of makes me think, am I supposed to be reading this as like a message? You know, they say it to each other when they realize it's Jesus, where our heart's not burning the whole time we were walking with him, as if this is a moral message for people who walk with Jesus the whole time, even though they didn't realize it, right? And so I read that as thinking like, oh, this seems to be easily conceivable as an intentionally mythological story. But there are Christians who will say, no, no, this was a historical event. So what genre do you think something like the Road to Amas is? Like, what were they even

attempting to do in your view? So this is a really hard question, and I don't know how to answer it with great confidence. So I spent a lot of time working on Matthew, including Matthew 27 and 28. And I came to the conclusion that Matthew's story of a guard at the tomb is a legend. It didn't happen. I also don't think that the story in 27 where the saints get out of their graves after an earthquake and walk into Jerusalem. I don't think that happened. But looking at Matthew itself and how he tells these stories, I see no hint at all that he thinks they are. fiction or that he's doing something like rabbinic haggadah and he knows their stories to make a point they're like parables of jesus right nobody asks uh you know the soer went out to sow what was his

name you know where was it it's a story but i don't see that in matthew and i don't see it in mark I do see it in John. I think John is very free in his ability to rewrite things. I don't know what to make of Luke. My tendency is to think that these writers are typically not writing from scratch when they're writing what we might think of as a fiction, but they are writing or working up a story or a tradition or what we might call a legend at some point.

And whether they realize it's a legend, I don't think Matthew does. I don't think Mark does if there are legends in Mark. I don't know what Luke is doing. I think John is quite conscious of what he's doing. I think John is very much like Plato with Socrates. That is, Plato knew Socrates. He knew lots of historical facts about Socrates,

but most of his dialogues are putting his own words into Socrates' mouth. He felt perfectly free to be Socrates' spokesperson or to make Socrates his spokesperson, right? So I think John knows that he's doing this sort of thing. But I don't know about Luke. So the Emmaus Road, you're right. It serves literary theological functions. It fits Luke well. But if you look at the secondary literature, you'll see that some of the same.

somebody like Boltman, who was skeptical about many things, said he thought this was a very ancient story that Luke has adapted and put into his narrative. Others would say, no, it's just Lukean creation. In my book, I say, I don't know where this comes from. I don't know how to evaluate it. So I just left it like that. I could add, however, that it is the case that elsewhere people don't recognize the risen Jesus. So Mary Magdalene in John 20, she thinks he's a gardener, right? What is that about? So I think all these stories are very strange. John is very strange, too. Jesus seems to pop in and out of the room, right? He's just there, and then he's gone. And I think Matthew 28 is also very weird because if you read it carefully, the women come and the stone is still in front of the tomb.

And then it gets rolled away by an angel and then they walk in and nobody's there, which means he's left either through the back door or he's gone through the rock or gone into another dimension or it's a very strange story. story. I personally think that these accounts reflect weird, very odd, visionary experiences, and they don't just fit our world. Jesus, the risen Jesus wasn't like me. I can't walk through walls, right? I just can't do that. And when people see me, if they know who I am, they don't say, oh, is that him? That's not what's going on here. there's also this insistence on behind these accounts there's this insistence on the physicality

of Jesus too though especially like in Luke's gospel where he asks for something to eat and eats it in front of them and it seems narratively that this is serving a role of indicating that Jesus is a real being of flesh and blood because they kind of can't believe that like is this guy like is it a vision

is he a ghost and he's like no give me some give me some food I'll eat it I'm a physical being and so I don't know how consistent, let's say, these positions are. Because when I think about the kind of experience of not recognizing him and then him suddenly becoming recognizable and moving through walls, I'm like, oh, maybe it's a vision. But when I hear about him eating food,

possibly even just to prove that he's physical, I'm like, does that mean that I'm interpreting one of those wrong or that it somehow contradict itself? What do you think is going on? So, well, I would say two things. So first of all, I think that the story in Luke, this story, and John, again, making food on the beach, I think those are later developments. I don't think that they are original.

And I think they're probably developing either against dosatism, which is the view that, you know, Jesus isn't really a human being or just against the claim that he was a ghost and, you know, you're just seeing things and so on. But there's something else interesting too. And I have pointed this out in a couple of places and nobody's ever picked it up. I think it's fascinating. So if you read stories of people who have what we would call visions, they sometimes will say, let's say it's a woman and she's meeting her dead husband. She'll say, I hugged him and he was real.

or I've read accounts of saints who run into risen saints of old and they'll say, no, he just sat with me and talked with me and he was just as solid as a rock. So there is a phenomenology or an experience within some visionary accounts of not just seeing, but feeling and thinking that this is. really there in some sense. It's in some sense substantial. I don't know what to make of these accounts. But again, if you take the visionary literature seriously, the literature full of testimonies that parapsychologists have gathered,

there are a number of accounts, lots of accounts, actually, of people, more than one person supposedly seeing a person or an apparition at the same time, which makes you think, what kind of, what kind of vision or hallucination is that? Is this semi-objective? What is going on? So I've never, I've never solved that, but it's important, it's important to remember that visions can seem solid to people.

I think in my book, I quote a woman who said, hey, it was just like Jesus. He was really there. I mean, you know, he wasn't just, you know, this fluffy. figure my husband was I hugged him he was really here just like in the gospel she said yeah but okay so that is interesting right I mean that's that's a that's a great little quote and I want to quote at the end there but then people are going to listen to that and say okay fair enough okay I'll grant you that people can have these kinds of visions and they can have seemingly like strong physicality but the one thing that's really difficult to wrap your head around is a group hallucination not like

Mary an apparition where loads of people sort of see briefly some kind of vision, but like 12 people who walked around for years with Jesus knew him intimately, all together in a room, seeing him, and then actually in John's Gospel, 11 of them seeing him, telling Thomas, who doesn't believe him, and then appearing to them once again in the same way with, again, that the physical instruction to, you know, come and touch my wounds, Thomas. So people will say, like, whatever scope there is for Peter's vision being visionary, or the 500 maybe, because it could have been like a flash in the sky, we don't have many details. These narratives of the disciples gathered in rooms with Jesus physically appearing, they'll say that can't be explained by hallucinations of the same

kind. Well, so this will depend. Maybe I should say this. Maybe it depends on your worldview. So I believe that visions are of two types. So lots of people disagree with me. and I recognize this. I think sometimes visions are pure projections and that they are subjective. And that's usually what we mean when we use the word hallucination. But I'm also of the persuasion

that sometimes when people see things we will call visions, they are seeing something that is there or they're doing more than projecting. Maybe they're projecting in response to incoming and incoming information. And again, if you look at the right literature, you will find lots of claims to more than one person seeing a dead individual, supposedly, at one time. So since I have been

persuaded that some of these events are real, it wouldn't bother me at all. In fact, I'd be delighted if the disciples actually saw Jesus at the same time. But given what I think, that doesn't establish the nature of the visual experience. It still, for me, could be visionary. But also, at this point, in defending myself, I think it's very weird to think that the risen Jesus was just like you and me. Did the risen Jesus have intestines? Did he have an immune system? Did he have a reproductive system? You know, everything that's inside of us is either for survival or reproduction. Everything, right? Jesus presumably is immortal, so he doesn't need to reproduce, and he doesn't need sustenance. Heck, he doesn't need air, I suppose.

So what is the point of this? It's very, it's very strange to me. I've always been in sympathy with Martin Luther's view that Jesus at some point just sort of sloughed off the physical body because he didn't need it anymore, right? Jesus is ubiquitous, can be anywhere, lives in people's hearts and things like that. So Jesus, in effect, becomes, you know, like the divine, becomes omnipresent. John Calvin, on the other hand, thinks that Jesus still has his human body and that he's actually somewhere out in the cosmos at the right hand of God. That's very strange to me.

I never resonated with that at all. So in terms of my personal theology, I'm much more attractive. to passing through rock and not being recognized and popping in and out of rooms than I am with this, you know, I'm still the same person I was even physically. That's very strange to me. Yeah, I think it's really crucial there to point out that when we say, well, did the disciples have some kind of vision that usually comes up in a form of criticism from a non-Christian? They say, oh, it was just a vision. But you could be a Christian who thinks there are such things as true visions. So many of the important interactions between humans and God, even in the Bible, are visions or dreams.

You know, Joseph is warned in a dream to flee to Egypt in the birth narratives, for example. And these can be true. So I think that was important to point out. I'm really interested in what the gospel authors were like trying to present. right, what they were sort of trying to, trying to tell the reader was going on, right? And so you already mentioned this fascinating story, which I would kick myself and not asking you about, which is the story in Matthew 27. At the time of the crucifixion of Jesus, Jesus dies, and at this time there's a huge earthquake.

It's the first two earthquakes in Matthew's Gospel, I think, in the death and resurrection narratives. it's a big earthquake and the graves of the holy ones open up it says the earth shook the rock split and the tombs broke open the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life they came out of the tombs after jesus's resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people appeared to many more detailed than this appearance to the 500 in pool actually we've got this extraordinary event which i think you agree with me in your book if i remember rightly that had this happened, that multiple people got out of their tombs, started walking around Jerusalem, appearing to people, it would be singularly the most extraordinary event in human history.

Christians, when I say that, Christians say to me, no, no, Jesus's resurrection was the most important. Okay, but like, as just a neutral observer who didn't understand what was going on, one person rising from the dead is pretty cool. But all of these people walking around, you've already said that you think this didn't happen, but indicated that maybe like Matthew or the author of Matthew's gospel thought that it happened. Yeah. If this, the two mysteries are this.

The one mystery is if it did happen, why does it only show up here in Matthew 27, not in any of the other gospels or any other contemporary source? But then the other mystery is that, well, then if it didn't happen, then where on earth has Matthew got this story from and why is he included it in his narrative? So I don't think it happened, but we don't have enough data to construct the history of this story. But I can tell you how I think it functioned. So one of the things we know in my judgment, this is high on the scale towards certainty, is that the early Christians and the followers of Jesus before Easter thought that the end was near.

And by the end, they meant the general resurrection and the last judgment and so on. Now, I think that this story makes Jesus' resurrection part of a larger collective resurrection, and it was probably interpreted and understood to mean, ah, the end has begun. Jesus is not the only one to rise from the dead.

Now it's starting up. Others are joining him also. I think this is how it would be understood. And I also think if you look at the Greek very carefully, you'll see that it echoes Ezekiel 37, which is about the vision of the dry bones being brought together. Jews understood this in terms of resurrection by Jesus' time, and a passage in Zechariah 14, which we also know was understood to refer to the resurrection of the dead, where there's a big

earthquake, and the amount of olives is split, and God comes and all the holy ones with him. so I think this is how the story functioned but how does it get rolling in the first place does it get started because somebody sees an open grave because somebody you know sees a ghost or I don't know how it how it gets started but if you look at Matthew's text it says that the saints came out of their tomb but only after his resurrection That is a sign that either Matthew or whoever stuck this in isn't thinking, oh, this is fiction. It's, I'm worried about the chronology of this. Where does it, where does it fit in?

And again, Matthew or some early redactor is thinking, yeah, we've got to work this out chronologically. And that's not what you do with a story that you're not, you know, that you, don't think happened. Well, another really weird thing about it is, as you've said, it details a chronology, but it says, I mean, this is at the time of Jesus's crucifixion. So Jesus dies, at which point there's an earthquake and the tombs open, and many of the holy ones got out of their graves and appeared to many after the resurrection. So it says that the earthquake that opened the tombs happened when Jesus died, but that these

people were walking around appearing to many people after the resurrection three days later. So, like, were they just kind of lying around in the open tomb for three days before they got up? It's this really interesting quirk, which again makes me kind of think, whoever was writing this, surely they must have kind of, they must have kind of realized that that was a little bit strange. And so either have had some explanation that they didn't make clear, or maybe just knew that they were dealing with something mythological. They're trying to say, yeah, Jesus' death causes the earthquake,

but because Jesus has to be the first born of the dead, has to be the first one to resurrect, they don't get out of their graves until after the resurrection. I'm pretty confused just like how that gap is accounted for. So, well, first of all,

um, most people think I've wrong, I'm wrong, but I have gathered a number of ancient sources which tell this story without the after his resurrection, that is tell it as though it is happening when Jesus is on the cross. Now, that means either one of two things. It means they know a version of this which doesn't have that, or that little note is so counterintuitive and so strange that they just forget it and then tell the story there. Which reports.

to you talking about like when you say you have you know versions of the story without that are you talking about like uh like versions of the of the gospel or do you mean like uh extra biblical sources people who recount this story or relate it briefly from the second through fourth century and then tell it as though this little snippet uh isn't there so i i i think that this little after his resurrection could be added because of what you just said. Jesus has to be the first born to rise from the dead. But I also know that there was a discussion about this later on, and I think something that worried people later on might also be there in the first century.

So we know that in the second century, the belief that Jesus descended into hell or Hades and wrecked the place up and took dead people, whoever they were, There's a lot of disagreement about that. We know that this is widely believed in the second century. Matthew is written towards the latter part of the first century. So the question is, who are these saints that rise from the dead? Well, the standard explanation was that they're the people that Jesus freed from Hades.

That is, these are the saints of old that he went. to hell to get and to bring out. But then you have the problem of, well, he can't bring them out before he's gone to Hades, so it can't be happening at the cross. So your explanation is one, but I think there's another explanation. And whether it's Matthew who is already worried about these things or somebody a little later after Matthew, but I do think originally, whether in Matthew's source or in Matthew, that it takes place when he is dying, and it's an eschatological event,

and I think it's part of the early Christian so-called realized eschatology. It's not just that the end is near, but end-time events are already happening. They are starting up. We're in the middle of a process that extends over time. The end is not a point. The end is a process. And look, people have already. risen from the dead. By the way, I could add here that there is an interesting debate about the

little creed in Romans 1, 2, through 4, where it says Jesus was vindicated by, and it doesn't say his resurrection from the dead as it does in the English translations. It says by the resurrection of the dead ones, literally. And it may well be that Paul's confession, the traditional material that he has here is giving you the same view that you have in Matthew 27, that it's not just one guy, but the general resurrection has really started. That's interesting. I hadn't come across that line of thought before. For me, as I indicated, I think a really important thing to separate out here are the views

that this didn't happen historically, and that the author of Matthew, thought it happened. He could have been reporting something he thought historically happened, but didn't. But it may also be that he did invent this himself, that this is for some reason something that Matthew comes up with. Of course, the problem with that is, as we've already mentioned, Mark's gospel, the earliest version that we have, doesn't have any post-resurrection appearances, making Matthew's gospel probably our earliest account of any post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. And if Matthew has made up this story about the resurrection of the holy ones in order to serve a theological point, what does that mean? It means that the author of Matthew's gospel

is willing to invent stories of resurrection to serve a theological point. Given that he's also our earliest source for post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, this might cause some trouble in thinking, in our trustworthiness, the trustworthiness that we place in Matthew's account of the resurrection of Jesus. And in getting what you think about that, I wanted you to tell me if I'm right about this. You write in your book about how the reporting of the rising of the holy ones in chapter 27, like the way that it's laid out, something about the formula with which Matthew tells the story is quite similar to the way in which he tells the story of the resurrection of Jesus, meaning that whatever Matthew believed about these events, there's an indication that he thought

they were of the same sort of kind of hystericity. Yeah, so he makes the resurrection of the Holy Ones anticipate or prefigure what's going to happen with Jesus. There's no doubt about that. Look, I don't think Matthew made this up, and I don't think he thinks it's fiction. but my view makes nobody like me because if Matthew made it up, it would be nice to say, well, he knew what he was doing and he expected everyone else to recognize what he's doing, and this is just a literary device and so on. I think it didn't happen, but Matthew thinks that it did.

It did. Now, to get to your other point, I don't think Matthew is creating the appearance at the end of his gospel. I also don't think he's inventing the appearance to Mary Magdalene. I think John has, there's some reason to think that John's account of Mary Magdalene is partially independent of Matthew. But I also think that the appearances to the 12 again in John and in Luke, which for me anyway, it appeared about the same time as Matthew. And I don't think Matthew is copying Luke or Luke is copying Matthew. I think I see several versions of the same story

and I think Matthew is bending it in his own way but I don't think he's inventing the motif of doubt I don't think he's inventing the story that Jesus appeared to the 12 and given what I find elsewhere I don't think he's inventing the notion of some sort of missionary idea associated with this initial appearance

so yeah he's writing it up but I still think he's working with tradition. And you also have to remember, we do have, on the assumption that Matthew knows Mark, we can see how Matthew treats at least one of his sources. And for the most part, he's rewriting it and not turning it into a totally different story. Yeah, that is important to point out, I think.

I remember something that I wanted to ask, when you were talking about visions and the nature of Jesus, and I just think it's worth a mention you stick it near the beginning of your book, and I imagine a lot of people ask you about this, but given that some people think Jesus' resurrection could have been actually non-physical, but we've got all this physical evidence, like the physical emptiness of the tomb and his physical body being crucified, could you just tell us what the, what is it that they call it, the accelerated disintegration theory is? for Jesus' resurrection?

Yeah, so I comment that human beings are brilliant, and even when their ideas are wacky, they're very creative. So this is the notion, which I have found in more than one place, that not in mainstream scholarship, that the risen Jesus doesn't need his body because dead people don't need their body. So the people who propose this are dualists. So they believe in the possibility of consciousness and personality, surviving bodily death.

And then they would go on and they would say, the risen Jesus didn't need his body for reasons I just said. Why does he need to reproduce and so on? But the idea is that people in Jesus' time and place thought you needed a body in order to survive because the doctrine of the resurrection was the dominant idea. and certainly the idea that the disciples work with. So, God had to make sure if the disciples were to believe that Jesus was alive,

that they thought he had been resurrected. So God did not resurrect the body because why would God want to animate a corpse? That would just be, you know, a zombie film. So what God did is he disintegrated the body. Now, all human bodies disintegrate if you put me on a slab, and wait 500 years. I'll be gone. I will have been, I will have turned to dust. So all God does without breaking natural law, supposedly, is he just speeds up the process of disintegration. And so when the disciples walk into the tomb or Mary walks into the tomb,

there's no body there. And the risen Jesus is a, you know, a free spirit separated from the body. So I don't believe that. I don't think it has any chance of being. true, but I admire people who think up weird scenarios like this. Yeah, one of my favorite things about reading such an in-depth work as yours on the resurrection is that you can go into such detail and down so many nooks and crannies that you discover some really interesting theories, one of which I've had a bit of fun using myself, which is the idea that one naturalistic explanation for the resurrection is that Jesus's body was stolen by the gardener of the surrounding sort of tomb area

because he was worried that if Jesus's body was there and people were treating it as a shrine, that they'd come to visit it and trample over his lettuces on the way to the tomb. And so the gardener stole the body and said, huh, look, he's not here anymore. He's resurrected from the dead. And if I'm not mistaken, that is a conspiracy theory which is mentioned by like Tatulian or something. Yes, it is. That's right. Uh-huh. So in the first part of the third century, that's already there. But you also have to remember that we know from Matthew that already in the first century, there are people who say the disciples came and stole the body. So there are alternative narratives. And one of my points is that there have always been and always will be alternative scenarios. And we don't have enough data to say, okay, every reasonable, every, reasonable person should be able to say oh yeah this is this is the one story that explains everything else it's just yeah of course you mentioned earlier the the strangeness that mary magdalen

thinks that jesus is the gardener like why would she not recognize him it's like well as you as you put in a footnote to one of your to somewhere in your book like well could this be an early polemic against the the uh the garden lettuce gardener sealing the tomb thing is that why she she says because she says to the gardener, if you've taken him, you know, tell me where you've put him, as if to say, oh, there might have been people who thought the gardener took him and Jesus and the story is saying, no, no, that's wrong. I think that's really interesting. You mentioned just then the guards at the tomb, which I think is also really important to specify for our listeners here, a lot of people will say the body couldn't have been stolen because there were guards.

And we have to understand that the guards only show up in Matthew's Gospel. They're only mentioned there and we're told why, right? Like Matthew says that these guards were there and that they were paid off to like spread the rumor that the body was stolen. And it says that like the Jews pay him and say, pay the guards and say, well, this Jesus guy has disappeared, but you guards, you're going to have to tell people that it was stolen. And it tells us, Matthew's Gospel says, and this is a rumor that still persists to this day. So we know that at the time of the writing of Matthew's gospel, there were people who thought the body was stolen. Maybe there were to, guards at the tomb, or maybe Matthew puts the guards at the tomb and introduces this story as a polemic against the idea that the body was stolen.

Do you think that there were really guards at the tomb, or do you think this is probably an invention of Matthew? Look, I don't think the guards would fit well with what you have in Mark or what you have in Luke or what you have in John. So I have to regard this as a sort of legendary development, a secondary development. But again, there is a lot of stuff going on in the early church. And Matthew isn't the only person passing on traditions about Jesus. People are telling stories. So if I had to bet, I would bet, again, he's not making it up, but he's heard something or he knows a story and he's decided he can work with it and put it in to his gospel. I think it's very hard to establish that Matthew created something out of nothing.

Now, some people would say, well, you know, stylistically, there are things here that are consistent with Matthew's authorship. But you can find those things also in material where he's revised Mark, where, you know, he's revising Mark. He's not just passing him along. He is stamping everything with his own style and his own vocabulary and so on. So just to find, you know, a redactional style isn't enough to say Matthew just created this from scratch. So we have to be careful here. But I do think that what's going on is some sort of debate here between some Christians. and some people who are trying to discredit them

and out of this somehow comes this story of a guard and Matthew then receives this. But I just, I have great difficulty thinking that there's any historical memory there. Yeah. I think I have sort of two questions, I guess, like in closing here. Two questions that jump out at me

from everything we've spoken about so far. The first is we talked about Paul. Paul's recounting in 1 Corinthians 15 of the visions of Jesus, Paul says a bit more about the resurrected Jesus and his nature elsewhere. And we talked about Jesus maybe being a vision or being physical. So the first question I had that I wanted to round off here with is, what in your estimation did Paul think was the nature of Jesus's resurrected body? Did he think there was a guy who got out of his tomb and was walking around shaking hands with people? Was he a visionary? What's your best estimation? So my best, my best guess is that Paul probably knew the story

of the empty tomb, but he did not think the way Calvin did. I think he believes in some sort of really radical transformation. So when he says, flesh and blood cannot inherit the king's of God. I don't think he's being figurative there. I think he's being literal and that he believes that human flesh and blood are transformed, transubstantiated, somehow made into something else. Because the current body cannot inherit the kingdom of God. So that's what I think about that. And again, these people may not have known each other. But if you look at Matthew, if if Matthew really is thinking about what he's doing and the body passes through or disappears or something like that, he's thinking that it's becoming something else. Jesus isn't just walking

through a doorway and he would have to walk through a doorway if he were like you or like me. So if ideas like that are in the air, Paul's idea makes some sort of sense. There's also a very famous passage from an apocalyptic work known as Second Barreau. and the resurrection is described here and people are radically transformed and changed and they become like the angels and you know they can they can go and live in heaven so the idea that human beings would be radically transformed uh i think is part of paul's world and i think it is probably commonplace in early Christianity. Here's a place, so I disagree with N.T. Wright about any number of things,

but I kind of like his phrase trans-physicality because, you know, it's Jesus isn't just a ghost, that's not what this is, but it's also not, you know, it's not physical, it's not physical like you and I are. So it's something else. Origin thought it was kind of in between matter and spirit. Well, that's somebody who knows all these stories and is trying to make sense of them. So if Paul thought something along those lines, well, I bet he did. Right, right.

Okay, finally then, a question which I think is obvious and jumps out, which you've probably been asked 100 million times, but just as a point of interest for our listeners, what do you think is the best naturalistic explanation for the resurrection of Jesus of the different ideas? We might have already talked about it. We've spoken a lot about the idea that the body was stolen and some kind of hallucination went down.

But I know that you think that Jesus did rise from the dead, but given the broadness of your research here, which naturalistic account has the most going for it in your view? So, if I were to argue for a skeptical position, I would argue that Jesus was crucified. I would then argue that he was, for reasons that are unclear, put in a grave of some sort, a cave tomb, and that the body was stolen by people who wanted to use it for this or that. And then I would probably argue that Mary and Peter both had what the psychologist would call bereavement vision. So it's very common very soon after death for people to see a dead loved one.

And if I were a skeptic, I would say, okay, all of those are just hallucinating, there are hallucinations. then I would have to say, well, the early Christians thought the end was near. So if the tube was empty and somebody had seen Jesus, it must mean that the resurrection has started. And then there would be some religious enthusiasm. People would get worked up over this. And then you'd have to say that the appearances to the 12 and the 500 were something like mass delusion or collective hallucination, something like that. And whether you can make, I think a skeptic shouldn't be worried about the 500. The 12 is a more interesting experience because I think we have remnants of it in three of the Gospels.

But that's what I would do. I would just say, okay, fine, the tomb was empty. People thought they saw Jesus, but here's an explanation. But of course, that is not your view. You do think Jesus arose from the dead. But as I ascertained from what you said at the beginning of our podcast to come full circle, those reasons are not because you've assessed the data and thought the only historical conclusion here like Lee Strobel style is that Jesus rose from the dead and that instead there's some other reason that you would believe that Jesus rose from the dead but there is this wealth of interesting historical investigation that we can do even if it isn't ultimately a proof of Jesus's resurrection oh you're asking me personally well that has to do that has to do with my theological worldview uh which is too complex to go into here, right?

But I will add this, and some Christians don't understand this at all, but I know people who think Jesus rose from the dead and are not Christians. This is really interesting to me, so I know some new agers who think this. There are Buddhists who think this. There are Hindus who think this.

There are Sufis who think this. You can, you can. you can interpret all of this stuff from another point of view. And that's what makes it so complex in my mind. I have my own worldview and my own religious ideas into which this fits well. But I don't know at the end of the day how to sit here and say, okay, here are my public arguments and everyone should agree with me. And if you don't, you're stupid.

But that's just not how religion works. That's not how worldviews get developed. That's just not it. Well, we can agree on that. Dale Allison, thanks so much for joining me. It's been a good one. Thanks so much for having me.