Jesus’ resurrection and mass hallucinations
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By Nicholas Covington
Article ID: 1334
Abstract: This article is a rebuttal to Gary Habermas, who defends the Jesus’ resurrection appearances against the hypothesis that these appearances were simply hallucinations. A plausible natural explanation of the facts concerning the origin of Christianity is presented and compared to the traditional Christian explanation (that Jesus was raised from the dead). It is shown that the acceptance of the empty tomb, appearances of Jesus to his followers, conversion of the Jesus’ skeptical brother James, and the conversion of Paul as fact does not warrant the conclusion that the resurrection occurred.
Gary Habermas is perhaps the most articulate defender of the historical fact of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. He wrote an article[1] which attempts to defend the resurrection appearances against the explanation that they were simply hallucinations. What follows is a rebuttal to the points Habermas makes (his words are in italics):
“[T]he chief examples of ‘collective hallucinations’ provided by Zusne and Jones were group religious experiences such as Marion apparitions. But these citations simply beg the question regarding whether such experiences could possibly be objective, or even supernatural, at least in some sense. In other words, why must a naturalistic, subjective explanation be assumed? This seems to rule them out in an a priori manner, before the data are considered.”
Habermas’ objection is correct: We must not assume that the miraculous is impossible. However, there is good evidence that group hallucination may be caused by suggestion. To give one example[2], there was a report of a man who found a group of people gazing upward. When he inquired what they were looking at, he was told that there was a crucifix in the sky. He walked up to another person in the group, shook his arm, and told him that there was no cross. The individual appeared to “wake up” from some trance-like state, and agreed with him, and that there was no cross. This would probably not happen if what the group was seeing was at all objective. In this case, it was not.
“Further, the collective hallucination thesis is unfalsifiable. It could be applied to purely natural, group sightings, simply calling them group hallucinations, too. On this thesis, crucial epistemic criteria seem to be missing. How do we determine normal occurrences from group hallucinations?”
That would be quite easy: By determining whether the group was exposed to emotional excitement, expectation of seeing something, hypnotic suggestion, hallucinogens, etc. In the case of Jesus’ followers, it is plausible that they were exposed to all (except, perhaps, hallucinogens).[3]
“Even if it could be established that groups of people witnessed hallucinations, it is critical to note that it does not at all follow that these experiences were therefore collective. If, as most psychologists assert, hallucinations are private, individual events, then how could groups share exactly the same subjective visual perception? Rather, it is much more likely that the phenomena in question are either illusions — perceptual misinterpretations of actual realities — or individual hallucinations.”
No one says that the group has to see precisely the same thing. For example, let’s take Jesus’ appearance to the five hundred reported in 1 Corinthians 15. We don’t have reports of individuals, but it is completely possible, for example, that some saw Jesus in white linen with a pure, unblemished body, and that others saw him in black with pierced hands and a wound in his side, and others saw Jesus in yet another form. It simply is not established that Jesus was seen exactly the same way by everyone present. Furthermore, it is not clear that everyone present at that instance saw the risen Jesus, since those present in a hallucinating group who do not share the experience will often not speak up.[4]
Zusne and Jones argue that ‘expectation’ and ‘emotional excitement’ are ‘prerequisites’ before such group experiences will occur. In fact, expectation ‘plays the coordinating role.’ But this scenario contradicts the emotional state of the early witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection appearances. Even psychologically, the early believers were confronted face-to-face with the utter realism of the recent and unexpected death of their best friend, whom they had hoped would rescue Israel. As those recent events unfolded in a whirlwind of Jesus’ physical beatings, crucifixion, and seeming abandonment, the normal response would be fear, disillusionment, and depression. To suppose that these believers would exhibit ‘expectation’ and ‘emotional excitement’ in the face of these stark circumstances would require of them responses that would scarcely be exhibited at a funeral! All indications are that Jesus’ disciples would exhibit the very opposite emotions from what Zusne and Jones convey as the necessary requirement.
I believe Zusne and Jones refer to ‘emotional excitement’ in the broad sense which includes fear and anxiety (not simply the type of ‘excitement’ one gets from going to a music concert). Emotional excitement (in the broad sense) is known to increase one’s suggestibility, opening one up to hallucinatory experiences.[5] Now, as for expectation: It is often asserted that Jesus’ followers never expected him to rise from the dead. This completely ignores the fact that the gospel of Mark records Jesus predicting his resurrection (Mark 10:32-34)! In a debate with Gerd Luedemann, William Lane Craig attempted to answer this objection by pointing to Luke 18:34, which says that the disciples did not understand what Jesus meant when he said this. Yet Luke is certainly later than Mark, so Luke’s account should not take precedence over Mark. Moreover, even if the disciples really did not understand what this meant, they may have come to understand it after his death.
(1) Even individual hallucinations are questionable for any believers who felt despair at the unexpected death of Jesus just hours before. Their hopes and dreams had suddenly been dashed. Extreme grief, not exuberance, would be the normal response.
No one is arguing that the disciples were “exuberant” after Jesus’ death. Here Habermas has again confused “emotional excitement” as including pleasure, which is not always the case.
(2) The wide variety of times and places when Jesus appeared, along with the differing mindsets of the witnesses, is simply a huge obstacle. Men and women, hard-headed and soft-hearted alike, all believing that they saw Jesus, both indoors and outdoors, by itself provides an insurmountable barrier for hallucinations. The odds that each person would be in precisely the proper frame of mind to experience a hallucination, even individually, decreases exponentially.
Jesus’ earliest appearances come from Mark, and 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 (I reject the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John due to the fact that they were most likely written much later than the first sources, and clearly show a great deal of embellishment). According to these sources, the women saw an angel in the tomb and subsequently Jesus appeared to Peter, James, the five hundred, and Paul. Essentially, we have a handful of private appearances and one mass appearance. These are not difficult to explain psychologically, as we shall see.
(3) Generally, hallucinations do not transform lives. Studies have argued that even those who hallucinate often (or perhaps usually) disavow the experiences when others present have not seen the same thing. Critics acknowledge that Jesus’ disciples were transformed even to the point of being quite willing to die for their faith. No early text reports that any of them ever recanted. To believe that this quality of conviction came about through false sensory perceptions without anyone rejecting it later is highly problematic.
We do not know if anyone else had a different hallucination when Jesus appeared, or if they would have spoken up to dismiss the Jesus hallucination. Furthermore, the culture we live in today is much different than first-century Palestine. One study showed that widows and widowers often hallucinate about their dead spouse, and yet very seldom tell anyone about the experience.[6] This is understandable, as the widow or widower might fear being branded with the stigma of mental illness. However, in the ancient cultural context we know that this was not the case. The Apostle Paul reports that he received his gospel from the personal revelation of Christ himself (Gal. 1:11-12). There are many other examples in the early church in which visions and such were taken as communication from the divine.[7] The point here is not what the early Christians hallucinated, but that those having hallucinations (especially with holy subject matter) would probably have been encouraged to do so, and would’ve been admired for their “abilities”. The acceptance of their peers also meant that such experiences would be taken seriously.
“(4) Of course, if the appearances were hallucinations, then Jesus’ body should have been located safely and securely in its grave just outside the city of Jerusalem! That body would undoubtedly be a rather large disclaimer to the disciples’ efforts to preach that Jesus was raised! But hallucinations do not even address this, so another naturalistic thesis is required.”
Although there are naturalistic hypotheses to account for the empty tomb,[8] we need not bring them up here. Habermas has not in this article presented any evidence for the empty tomb, and the usual list of evidences for an empty tomb have been adequately rebutted elsewhere.[9] Furthermore, even if we did have to add another naturalistic hypothesis to account for the empty tomb, this would not show naturalistic explanations of the evidence untenable.
“Still other issues also impede the hallucination hypothesis. While these are perhaps not as weighty, they still count: (5) Why did the hallucinations stop after 40 days? Why didn’t they continue to spread to other believers, just as the others had?”
These experiences did not stop. Visions of Jesus occur throughout church history[10], and still occur today.
“(6) The resurrection was the disciples’ central teaching, and we usually take extra care with what is closest to our hearts. This is what drove Paul to check out the nature of the gospel data with other key disciples on at least two occasions, to make sure he was preaching the truth (Gal. 1:18-19; 2:1-10). He found that they were also speaking of Jesus’ appearances to them (1 Cor. 15:11). “
I do not doubt that there were early Christians who genuinely believed they saw Jesus, and I do not see this as a problem for naturalistic explanations of what happened then.
“ (7) What about the natural human tendency to touch? Would no one ever discover, even in a single instance, that their best friend, seemingly standing perhaps just a few feet away, was not really there?”
I don’t believe that any of the early reports (Mark and Paul’s letters) say anything about touching or attempting to touch the risen Jesus. In any case, one study has shown that one-third of grief hallucinations include seeing, hearing, and speaking with the deceased, so being able to touch as well would not be much of a stretch.[11]
An alternative account of the resurrection of Jesus Christ
To be clear, let me explain what I am proposing as a natural explanation of William Lane Craig’s “four facts”:
FACT #1: After his crucifixion, Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea.
FACT #2: On the Sunday following the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers.
FACT #3: On multiple occasions and under various circumstances, different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.
FACT #4: The original disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary.
Think of the situation the disciples faced after Jesus’ crucifixion:
1. Their leader was dead. And Jews had no belief in a dying, much less rising, Messiah. The Messiah was supposed to throw off Israel’s enemies (= Rome) and re-establish a Davidic reign—not suffer the ignominious death of criminal.
2. According to Jewish law, Jesus’ execution as a criminal showed him out to be a heretic, a man literally under the curse of God (Deut. 21.23). The catastrophe of the crucifixion for the disciples was not simply that their Master was gone, but that the crucifixion showed, in effect, that the Pharisees had been right all along, that for three years they had been following a heretic, a man accursed by God!
3. Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone’s rising from the dead to glory and immortality before the general resurrection at the end of the world. All the disciples could do was to preserve their Master’s tomb as a shrine where his bones could reside until that day when all of Israel’s righteous dead would be raised by God to glory.”[12]
I have no problem accepting facts 1 and 3. I question fact 2, although I will accept it for the sake of argument and remain agnostic about which naturalistic explanation for it is correct. I disagree with fact 4, on the grounds that:
- Jesus himself never said he was going to establish a kingdom on earth, quite the contrary (John 18:36). Whether one takes the saying in John as original to Jesus or not, it cannot be denied that the earliest Christians may have come to understand Jesus’ kingdom in such a way.
- Cognitive Dissonance may explain why the disciples still believed that Jesus was the messiah, even after his death. As one psychologist described it:
“Cognitive Dissonance Theory has shown how individuals cannot easily dismiss a belief or attitude they hold, even when the attitude is directly contradicted by evidence or events. People will sooner adopt farfetched ideas to explain events than relinquish their preconceptions.”[13]
A good example of Cognitive Dissonance can be found amongst the “Jehovah’s Witnesses” who predicted that the world would end in 1975;[14] This year came and passed, but did not convince many within the group to abandon their religion.
Perhaps an even more damning counterpoint to this defense is provided by Rodney Stark:
“…Nor would the Jews have been so easily put off by the facts of the Crucifixion. Indeed, the cross was a symbol used to signify the messiah in Hebrew manuscripts prior to the Crucifixion.”[15]
Mark 6:14 undercuts Craig’s third point, which states that some believed Jesus was John the Baptist raised from the dead! It is hard to see how our earliest gospel could attest to this had the concept of a single resurrection before the general resurrection been unthinkable to first century Jews.
Let me now return to explaining the individual and collective appearances to Jesus, attested by Mark and 1 Corinthians 15. I contend that these may easily be explained by the examples of hallucinations (both individual and collective) which I previously cited. Although the works I cited dealt with grief hallucinations of widows and widowers, we must not forget that Jesus probably held a place in the heart of his followers that was similar to that of a spouse.
Alternately, we could understand the post-resurrection appearances in the following way: Studies have shown that individuals who join cults often have schizoid tendencies,[16] and that schizoid personalities (which make up more than one-half percent of the population[17]) are more prone to hallucinations and “anomalous perceptual experiences”[18]. Therefore, the early Christians would have been prone to hallucination, like hallucinating Jesus.
Other facts relevant to this discussion are the conversion of James (who was supposedly skeptical of Jesus’ claims during his lifetime, see John 7:5) and the conversion of Paul. William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas often argue in their debates that James would not have thrown off his initial skepticism unless he really did see Jesus, and furthermore that he would not have hallucinated Jesus because he had no subconscious desire to see Jesus. Yet this does not take into account how Jesus’ gruesome death may have emotionally affected James. Perhaps seeing Jesus’ gruesome death made James more open to belief in Jesus’ divinity.
As for the conversion of Paul, there is some evidence that he was epileptic. According to D. Landsborough, there is a personality type which occurs more frequently in epileptic individuals:
“This personality structure includes increased concern with philosophical, moral and religious issues; increased and extensive writing on religious or philosophical themes, lengthy letters, diaries, poetry; diminution of sexual activity; aggressiveness. Paul’s personality would seem to bear some resemblance to this description.”[19]
Comparing the two explanations of Jesus’ resurrection
I propose that all of the evidence of Jesus’ resurrection may be explained with one or both of these hypotheses:
- The individuals attracted to early Christianity were analogous to those joining cults and fringe religious movements in the present day.
- If one accepts the empty tomb, then a second hypothesis may be needed to explain it, some of which I have previously listed: Jesus’ body was stolen, the women went to the wrong tomb, or Joseph of Arimathea moved the body before the women came to the tomb.
By contrast, the proposals of William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas require more hypotheses, all of them requiring more extreme assumptions, including:
- God exists.
- God intervenes in the world.
- Raising Jesus from the dead would be something that God would have been inclined to do.
Obviously, each of these hypotheses is highly contentious in the spheres of philosophy and religion, for even if one believes in a God who intervenes in the world, one may not believe that God was inclined to raise Jesus from the dead. For example, if one believes that God does not perform miracles to or through false prophets, and that Jesus was a false prophet,[20] then one will not believe that God raised Jesus from the dead.
My theory is simpler and more plausible – I explain things through known phenomena that both theists and non-theists can agree exist. Therefore, I conclude that it is most probably correct.
REFERENCES
[1] “Explaining Away Jesus’ Resurrection: The Recent Revival of Hallucination Theories” Originally published in the Christian Research Journal / vol. 23, no. 4, 2001
Accessed: http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/crj_explainingaway/crj_explainingaway.htm
Accessed 6/22/09
[2] Page 90, Charlie Broad, Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research Routledge, 2000.
[3] Jesus, in his cultural context, played the role of a shaman. See:
Page 104, JJ Pilch, “Altered States of Consciousness in the Synoptics” published in The Social Setting of Jesus and the Gospels, Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2002.
Shamans usually understand very well how to use the power of suggestion:
Page 137, DC Dennett, Breaking the Spell, Penguin, 2006.
Suggestion may induce hallucination:
Page 111, DH Radcliffe, Illusions and Delusions of the Supernatural and Occult, Kessinger Publishing, 2006.
After Jesus’ death, it is possible that Peter or James took over his role, and also acted as the shaman (thus accounting for the appearance to the five hundred mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:3-11).
[4] See Page 117, Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones, Anomalistic Psychology: A Study in Magical Thinking, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989.
[5] Page 111, DH Radcliffe, Illusions and Delusions of the Supernatural and Occult, Kessinger Publishing, 2006.
[6] WD Rees, “The Hallucinations of Widowhood” Br Med J 1971;4:37-41 (2 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.4.5778.37
[7] See Pages 114-115 and 214, Everett Ferguson, Early Christians Speak Vol. 2, ACU Press, 2002.
[8] For instance: Jesus’ body was stolen, the women went to the wrong tomb, or the Joseph of Arimathea moved the body before the women came to the tomb.
[9] See Jeffrey Jay Lowder, “Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb Story: A Reply to William Lane Craig” Published in “The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave” Ed. By Robert M. Price and Jeffrey Jay Lowder, Prometheus, 2005.
[10] See Pages 114-115 and 214, Everett Ferguson, Early Christians Speak Vol. 2, ACU Press, 2002.
[11] A. Grimby, “Bereavement among elderly people: grief reactions, post-bereavement hallucinations and quality of life” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica VL: 87 NO. 1 72-80 (1993)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0447.1993.tb03332.x
[12] The “four facts” presentation is taken verbatim from:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5351
Accessed 6/22/09
[13] Page 152, Marc Galanter, Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion, Oxford University Press, 1989.
[14] http://www.4jehovah.org/help-1975-prophecy.php
Accessed 3/27/09
[15] Page 62, Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, HarperOne, 1997.
[16] Day, S., & Peters, E. (1999), “The incidence of schizotypy in new religion movements”. Personality and Individual Differences, 27, 55-67.
[17] Torgerson S, Kringlen E, Cramer V, “The Prevalence of Personality Disorders in a Community Sample” Arch Gen Psychiatry, Vol 58, 590-596
[18] McCreery C. and Claridge G. (1996), “A Study of Hallucination in Normal Subjects-I. Self-Report Data” Personality and Individual Differences, 21, 739-747.
[19] D Landsborough, “St. Paul and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 1987;50:659-664
[20] The predominant view in New Testament scholarship today is that Jesus predicted that the end of the world was to come in his day. See Bart Ehrman, “Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium” Oxford University Press, 2001.
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